HERBERT SPENCER 

HIS LIFE AND WORKS 



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HERBERT SPENCER 



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HERBERT SPENCER 

THE MAN AND HIS WORK 



BY 

HECTOR MACFHERSON 

AUTHOR OF "THOMAS CARLYLK " AND "ADAM SMITH 



NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. 

1900 









L.ibPary of Coiior-;- i 
Two CjpitS REOlilVtD j 

JUN 30 19C0 j 

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Copyright, 1900, 
By hector MACPHERSON. 



NoriaooU JPresB 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Masa. U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

A PHILOSOPHIC thinker of the first rank is always 
known by the amount of literature which his writ- 
ings call forth. Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Hume, 
Kant, Hegel — these in their respective spheres were 
epoch-makers. From the philosophic germs which 
they scattered have sprung whole libraries of con- 
troversial literature. In like manner Mr. Herbert 
Spencer has paid the penalty of his great philosophic 
fame. As an epoch-maker, he, too, has had to pass 
through the fire of hostile criticism. For a great 
number of years liis philosophy has been the battle- 
ground of controversialists who, differing in many 
ways among themselves, have united in their at- 
tempts to discredit a system of thought which 
threatened to destroy long-cherished opinions and 
stereotyped beliefs. One result of this has been 
that to the general public the Synthetic Philosophy, 
embedded as it has been in the works of critics, has 
necessarily appeared in a fragmentary form. My 
object in writing this book has been to present to 



vi PREFACE 

the general reader Spencerism in lucid, coherent 
shape. Nothing can take the place of Mr. Spencer's 
own writings, but mastery of these demands an 
amount of leisure and philosophic enthusiasm which 
are by no means widespread. 

In this design I have had the approval of Mr. 
Spencer. He has taken a kindly interest in the 
undertaking, and has freely responded to my request 
for material. The book is by no means a slavish 
reproduction of Mr. Spencer's writings. Taking my 
stand upon the fundamental ideas of the Synthetic 
Philosophy, I have used them in my own way to 
interpret and illustrate the great evolutionary 
process. 

While, therefore, Mr. Spencer has been in full 
sympathy with the aim of the book, he does not 
stand committed to the detailed treatment of the 
subject. The work has indeed been a labor of 
love. Should it induce the reader to study Spen- 
cerism as expounded by the master himself, my 
reward will be ample. 

I should be lacking in gratitude did I not express 
my obligations to the elaborate work of Mr. John 
Fiske, entitled Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy. No 
student of Spencer can afford to neglect Mr. Fiske's 
book, which it would be difficult to rival in point 



PREFACE vii 

of lucidity and intellectual ability. I am also in- 
debted to Professor Hudson of California for his 
admirable book, Introduction to the Philosophy of 
Herbert Spencer. In the philosophic and economic 
parts of the book, I have drawn upon a few para- 
graphs in my Carlyle and Adam Smith. Knowledge 
of a philosopher's system of thought is greatly helped 
by knowledge of the philosopher himself, and in this 
respect I have been exceedingly fortunate. The 
recollection of my personal relations with Mr. Spen- 
cer will ever be to me a priceless possession. 

HECTOR MACPHERSON. 
Edinburgh, April, 1900. 



CONTENTS 



OHAPTBB 

I. EARLY LIFE 



II. INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT . 

III. EVOLUTION OF THE EVOLUTION THEORY 

IV. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS . 

V. THE COSMOS UNVEILED .... 

VI. THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE .... 

VII. THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 

VIII. THE ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY . 

IX. THE POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY . 

X. THE ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY . 

XI. THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION . 

XII. THE PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT OF SPENCERISM 

XIII. THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF SPENCERISM . 



1 

18 

39 

54 

66 

84 

105 

124 

146 

169 

189 

201 

216 



INDEX 



235 



CHAPTER I 

EARLY LIFE 

Carlyle has remarked that the history of the world 
is in the main the history of its great men. There 
is profound truth in the saying, though in his antip- 
athy to a purely scientific treatment of civilization 
Carlyle used his great man theory in fantastic and 
misleading fashion. The intellectual contribution 
which each century makes to the progress of the 
world takes its hue from the dominating influence 
of its leading thinkers. True greatness is epoch- 
making. If we wish to discover the place of a 
thinker in the great evolutionary chain, we must 
apply the epoch-making test. The mind of the 
great man is like an overflowing reservoir which 
makes for itself new channels and fertilizes hitherto 
unknown tracts of thought. Or to use a biological 
simile, the sociological effects produced by the great 
man resemble the changes caused in the fauna and 
flora of a country by the introduction of a new 
species. Think of the impoverishment which liistory 
would sustain by the obliteration of the names, say, 
B 1 



2 HERBERT SPENCER 

of Paul, Augustine, Calvin. Those thinkers not only- 
unlocked new forces in their day and generation, 
but even yet from their tombs they hold sway over 
the minds of countless thousands. Their specula- 
tions formed the creeds of centuries, and their 
passionate and yearning musings upon human life 
and destiny find echo in the souls of some of the 
noblest of earth's sons. When the long night of 
authority and credulity was drawing to a close, 
when the sun of inquiry was dawning above the 
horizon, great thinkers arose who, from the moun- 
tain tops of science, foresaw the meridian glory of 
the Age of Reason. 

After the splendid work of Mr. John Morley, it 
is superfluous to dwell upon the achievements in 
the cause of enlightenment of the intellectual heroes 
of the Revolution epoch. The great constructive 
systems of the past had not only fallen before the 
assault of Reason, but had become cumberers of 
the ground. The decaying creeds of the past not 
only impeded the progress of thought, but were a 
barrier to social amelioration. Paths had to be 
cut through the jungle, and, in the name of 
humanity, abuses hoary with the sanctity of re- 
ligion had to be attacked. For the pioneering work 
accomplished, humanity is everlastingly debtor to 
the bold thinkers of the Revolution epoch. Not 
content with the work of destruction, they set 



EARLY LIFE 3 

themselves to the task of construction. Humanity 
cannot live on negation. Through the writings of 
Voltaire, Diderot, and the Encyclopeedists, may be 
detected attempts to formulate a conception of 
man and his destiny which would take the place 
of the theologic conception which in pre-scientific 
times had done duty for ages as man's attempt to 
solve the problem of Existence ; indeed the idea 
of the Encyclopoedia rose out of the feeling that 
destruction needed to be supplanted by painstaking 
attempts to attain to a comprehensive, coherent 
theory of life, in which humanity would find at 
once intellectual satisfaction and emotional har- 
mony. Out of dissatisfaction with mere negation 
grew not only the Encyclopaedia^ but the imposing 
systems of Holbach and Helvetius. The time was 
not ripe for imposing philosophic systems, for the 
simple reason that knowledge of the universe and 
man had not gone far enough to be organized on 
a scientific basis. No system can endure which 
rests on premature generalizations and unverified 
speculations ; unconsciously the Rationalists of the 
Revolution imported into their creed-making the 
unreliable methods of the Theologians. Still their 
failure on the constructive side should not lessen 
our admiration for the splendid work they did as 
liberators of humanity. They loosened the hold of 
decaying creeds ; they cleared the dense forest of 



4 HERBERT SPENCER 

thought ; they pointed the way to the promised 
land of mental freedom and social progress. 

After the French Revolution had spent its force, 
progressive thinkers became alive to the purely 
destructive nature of that movement on the in- 
tellectual side. Among them was Comte — a thinker 
whose great merits have not had adequate rec- 
ognition. Comte had the true sign of greatness 
— intellectual vision. He was not content, like 
Hume and analytic thinkers generally, to resign 
himself to the gloom of the forest, or to smother the 
ever-recurring thoughts of man and his destiny in 
the petty butterfly attractions of an Epicurean 
philosophy. His great ambition was to provide a 
path and an ideal by which humanity would march 
boldly on to the expansive uplands and heights of 
truth. Comte's methods were distasteful to his 
English readers. His colossal egoism, his prefer- 
ence for mediaeval modes of thought, and his dis- 
paragement of individual liberty and reason, set on 
edge the critical teeth of many who sympathized with 
his high-souled endeavors. Destructive critics like 
Huxley used Comte in order to make sport for the 
Philistines. The fatal blow to Comte's influence 
came from the new idea of Evolution, which wrecked 
his philosophic system as it did the systems of Buckle 
and Mill. All three thinkers found themselves 
stranded because of their inability to incorporate 



EARLY LIFE 6 

the new views which were to revolutionize philo- 
sophical as well as scientific thought. Still, in spite 
of the ridicule of Huxley and the contemptuous 
treatment accorded to him in France and England, 
Comte deserves to be held in remembrance as a 
thinker of fine caliber, prophetic vision, fertile 
thought, and massiveness of mind. 

The dominating idea of the last half of the nine- 
teenth century is Evolution — an idea so far-reaching 
in its influence, so mesmeric in its power, that at its 
touch all other ideas crystallize round it and, as if 
by magic, yield to its potent sway. The thinker 
with whom history will imperishably associate the 
idea of Evolution is Herbert Spencer. Perhaps in 
no sphere has the influence of the Evolution theory 
been more indirectly potent than in biography. So 
long as man was treated as an extra-mundane 
creation there was a natural tendency to concen- 
trate attention upon the dramatic and incalculable 
side of his nature. Emphasis was laid upon the 
inner psychical factors to the exclusion of those 
physical conditions which play such a prominent 
part in human development. Great men, in the 
language of Carlyle, were messengers of the Eternal 
— messengers who so dominated their environment 
as to baffle all attempts at explanation and classi- 
fication. Ignorance of the law of evolution natu- 
rally led to an unintelligent hero-worship which 



6 HERBERT SPENCER 

blinded the intellect to the subtle relations existing 
between man and his surroundings. Herbert Spencer 
changed all that. His Principles of Biology fore- 
shadowed a conception of biography in which the 
great man would no longer be viewed as an incom- 
prehensible incarnation of supernatural energy, but 
as the product of certain interpretable forces. 
Between the average man and the great man the 
difference is mainly this — the one remains passive, 
while the other, as has been already said, reacts 
upon his environment, thereby unlocking new forces 
and giving a fresh impetus to progress. In coming 
to the study of Herbert Spencer, we cannot do 
better than use for purposes of biographic inter- 
pretation his own far-reaching principles. Before 
seeking to understand Spencer the philosopher, it is 
necessary to understand Spencer the man. A critical 
estimate can only lay claim to completeness when 
a picture is given of the philosopher as influenced 
by his age as well as dominating his age. If the 
title of great is due to those rare souls who have 
scaled the heights of human thought, and from the 
Pisgah summit have pointed the way to intellectual 
horizons undiscoverable by ordinary mortals, upon 
the brow of Herbert Spencer must be placed the 
never-fading wreath of immortality. 

Herbert Spencer was born at Derby on 27th April 
1820. Spencer, like Mill, owed nluch to his father. 



EARLY LIFE 7 

but the educational methods pursued were very- 
different indeed. James Mill had an almost fanat- 
ical belief in education. One of the tenets of 
the eighteenth-century philosoj)hy was the modifia- 
bility of human nature, and the value of systematic 
training. James Mill put his son into training 
at the earliest possible moment ; and for years 
subjected him to a severe course of mental disci- 
pline. The elder Spencer, in his own way as intel- 
lectually independent as James Mill, took a more 
rational view of education. He did not deem it 
the highest wisdom to force children into an 
artificial groove ; he preferred to trust to the 
spontaneity of nature. In his view cramming of 
the memory with bits of detached knowledge was 
of little value compared with thorough mental 
individuality. Being a teacher by profession, the 
elder Spencer was in a position to give full sway 
to his ideas. To this, and not, as has been supposed, 
to delicate health, was it that young Spencer was 
somewhat backward in his early education. He was 
seven years of age before he could read. In due 
course the boy was sent to a training day-school, 
but his progress was not particularly satisfactory. 
He did not take kindly to the routine Oj. school life. 
He is described as having been restless, inattentive, 
and by no means pUable. In all lessons in which 
success depended upon mechanical methods, such 



8 HERBERT SPENCER 

as learning by rote, young Spencer did not show to 
advantage. Knowledge of the fragmentary kind he 
did not readily assimilate ; it was only when his ob- 
serving and reasoning faculties were called into play 
that intellectual progress was discernible. Nature 
appealed to him more forcibly than books. Science 
in his youthful days exercised over him a special 
charm. One of his favorite occupations is said to 
have been "the catching and preserving of insects 
and the rearing of moths and butterflies from eggs 
through larva and chrysalis to their most developed 
forms." 

To his domestic surroundings, more than to his 
formal school training, the boy was indebted for 
his mental development. His father and uncles 
were men of pronounced individualities, bold 
thinkers on religion, politics, and social questions 
generally. In the family circle young Spencer 
heard all the topics of the day discussed with free- 
dom and boldness. Such an atmosphere was fatal to 
that hereditary reliance upon authority character- 
istic of average middle-class homes. Moreover, the 
boy was early taught to think for himself in matters 
religious by the example of dissent which he 
witnessed weekly in his -own home. His parents 
were originally Methodists, but his father had a 
preference for the Quakers, while his mother re- 
mained true to the Wesleyan persuasion. On Sun- 



EARLY LIFE 9 

day mornings young Spencer attended the Quakers' 
meeting with his father, and in the evening he 
accompanied his mother to the Methodist chapel. 
Thus early the future philosopher had to reckon 
with the personal equation, the domestic bias in 
matters theological. There is nothing in Mr. 
Spencer's writings to show that religion had ever 
taken vital hold of him, as it did some of his noted 
contemporaries. Mill has left on record how he 
grew up outside of religious influences. His father 
deliberately kept him from contact with religion on 
its emotional and ceremonial side. In that case 
Mill's detachment of mind on religious questions 
was intelligible ; but, in regard to Spencer, the 
curious thing was that, while moving in the midst 
of religious influences, he seems to have remained 
totally unaffected by them. One would have ex- 
pected to find him, like George Eliot, under the 
sway of those spiritual ideals and impulses which 
were inseparably associated with middle-class 
Evangelicalism in the first half of the century. 
In conversation I once asked Mr. Spencer if, like 
George Eliot, he had first accepted the orthodox 
creed, then doubted, and finally rejected it. His 
reply was that to him it never appealed. It was 
not a case of acceptance and rejection : his mind 
lay outside of it from the first. 

In many ways both Mill and Spencer would have 



10 HERBERT SPENCER 

found their philosopliic influence broadened and 
deepened had they, in their early days, shared in 
the spiritual experiences of their contemporaries. 
Those thinkers who, under the domination of youth- 
ful enthusiasm, have endeavored to realize super- 
natural ideals and, under emotional fervor, to strike 
the note of ascetic sanctity, receive an almost 
intuitive insight into the deeper religious problems 
of the age — an insight denied those who come to 
the study of religious psychology with the foot-rule 
of the logician and the weighing-scales of the 
statistician. Many students who have long since 
broken away from the bonds of orthodoxy, and 
whose minds now soar into the ampler air of 
speculative freedom, will be ready to admit that in 
dealing with religion the minds of both Mill and 
Spencer work under serious limitations, due to their 
lack of spiritual receptivity in early daj^s. To this 
lack of receptivity must be traced the error into 
which Mr. Spencer fell in his First Principles in 
supposing that science and religion would find a 
basis of agreement in recognition of the Unknowable. 
The terms proposed by science resemble those of the 
husband who suggested to the wife, as a basis of 
future harmony, that he should take the inside of 
the house and she the outside. 

When young Spencer reached his thirteenth year, 
the question of his future came up for serious con- 



EARLY LIFE 11 

sideration. It was deemed wise to trust him to the 
educational care of his uncle, the Rev. Thomas 
Spencer, perpetual curate at Hinton, near Bath. 
The Rev. Mr. Spencer was a Radical in politics, 
a temperance advocate, an anti-corn law agitator, 
and an enthusiastic advocate of all measures relating 
to the welfare of the people — a man, in brief, whose 
life was shortened by unsparing devotion to ideals 
which are now recognized as realizable, but which 
then were treated as the products of a Quixotic 
mind. The reverend gentleman, himself a dis- 
tinguished graduate of Cambridge, naturally set 
himself to qualify his nephew for a university 
career. His nephew's mind, however, was not cast 
in the university mould. In his interesting 
biographic sketch of Herbert Spencer, Professor 
Hudson sums up very concisely the progress made 
during this period : " The course of study now 
pursued was somewhat more regular and definite 
than had been the case at home ; and the dis- 
cipline was of a more rigorous character. But 
save for this the uncle's method and system did not 
materially differ from those to which young Spencer 
had been accustomed while under his father's roof. 
Once again his successes and his failures in the 
various studies which he now took up were alike 
significant. In the classic languages to which a 
portion of his time was daily given very little 



12 HERBERT SPENCER 

progress was made. The boy showed neither taste 
nor aptitude in this direction ; rules and vocabularies 
proved perpetual stumbling-blocks to him; and what 
little was with difficult}^ committed to memory was 
almost as soon forgotten. But while for studies 
of this class there was shown an inaptitude 
almost astounding, a counterbalancing aptitude was 
exhibited for studies demanding a different kind of 
ability — constructive and co-ordinating power rather 
than a memory for unconnected details. In mathe- 
matics and mechanics such rapid advancement was 
made that he soon placed himself in these depart- 
ments abreast of fellow students much older than 
himself. What was noticeable, too, was his early 
habit of laying hold of essential principles, and his 
ever-growing tendency towards independent analysis 
and exploration." 

Close study of his nephew's mind led the Rev. Mr. 
Spencer to abandon the idea of a university career. 
It has been represented that his uncle was emphatic 
upon the necessity of a university training, and only 
reluctantly gave up the idea in consequence of the 
nephew's obstinacy; but I have it on Mr. Spencer's 
authority that this was not the case. In his own 
words : " There was no dispute. My uncle gave up 
the idea when he saw that I was unfit." That is to 
say, it became clear to the Rev. Mr. Spencer that 
the mind of his nephew was of a type which could 



EARLY LIFE 13 

not be fitted into the university mould. He saw 
that it would follow a bent of its own, and would 
not be forced into conventional channels. Much has 
been said of the loss which Spencer has sustained 
through exclusion from the atmosphere and training 
of university life. In dealing with exceptional minds, 
whose evolution is pre-determined along original 
lines by innate capacity and genius, no good purpose 
is served by appealing to general rules, which from 
the nature of the case can deal only with the 
expected and the calculable, not with those out- 
standing individualities which defy the ordinary 
laws of averages and probabilities. One drawback 
certainly was attached to Spencer's exclusion from 
university life. He was compelled to face not only 
a hostile public, but the insidious opposition of 
university cliques, who could not bear to see a new 
thinker of commanding power step forward into the 
intellectual arena without the hall-mark of uni- 
versity culture. Had Spencer been the centre of an 
admiring group of university disciples his system 
would have come into vogue much earlier; it would, 
in other words, have become fashionable. As it 
was, after the gradual decay of home-made philoso- 
phies, Hegel became the idol of university circles, 
and Spencer was left, a voice crying in the wilder- 
ness. Notwithstanding all this, Spencer gained more 
than he lost by missing the conventional university 



14 HERBERT SPENCER 

training. However reluctant the Rev. Mr. Spencer 
was to abandon his deeply- cherished design, he 
admitted in after years that in following the prompt- 
ings of nature his nephew had acted wisely. He 
doubtless saw that the very qualities which unfitted 
his nephew for the routine of a classical curriculum 
were precisely the qualities which gave him his 
great superiority in science and philosophy. A 
grinding in dead languages and a saturation in old- 
world methods and ideas might have seriously 
checked the faculties for observation and massive 
generalization which, when left to develop naturally, 
have made their possessor an unrivalled king in 
quite a new intellectual sphere, in which stand in 
unique conjunction the widest speculative thought 
and unparalleled analytic power. 

The abandonment of the university design led 
to a period of uncertainty as to young Spencer's 
future. He returned home. The practical outlook 
seemed vague and uncertain. In the absence of 
any well-defined plan, his father secured him an 
assistantship in a school. The teaching profession 
was one in which Spencer might well have shone 
provided the curriculum were framed on a rational 
and scientific basis. As a teacher he would have 
found himself out of sympathy with modern systems, 
and sooner or later his career would have been 
cut short. One quality invaluable in a teacher he 



EARLY LIFE 16 

possessed in a pre-eminent degree — that of luminous 
exposition. Those who have had the privilege of 
conversing with Mr. Spencer have been at once 
struck with the marvellous lucidity of his handling 
of the most abstruse topics. Into ordinary con- 
versation he carries the habits of thought and 
exposition which other men usually leave behind in 
the study. There is no pedantry, no formalism: 
sweep of thought, clearness in statement, fertility 
of illustration, and lucidity of exposition are wedded 
to conversational charm. This expository power 
struck John Stuart Mill forcibly in his first inter- 
view with Spencer. A friend of Mill once told me 
of Mill's admiration for Spencer's power of present- 
ing a full-orbed view of his subject in language 
at once precise and luminous. It is plain that 
Spencer would have made an ideal teacher. How- 
ever, circumstances rather than design cut short 
his pedagogic career. In the autumn of 1837 young 
Spencer, whose early bent was towards science, 
especially on the mathematical and mechanical 
sides, received and accepted an offer from the 
resident engineer of the London division of the 
London and Birmingham railway, then in process 
of construction. For a year and a half he worked 
in London as a civil engineer, and subsequently, 
for two and a half years, on. the Birmingham and 
Gloucester railway. During this time he showed 



16 HERBERT SPENCER 

his interest in the intellectual side of his profes- 
sion by contributing several papers to the Civil 
Engineer Journal^ and his inventive faculties 
found scope in the invention of a little instru- 
ment called the velocimeter, for calculating the 
speed of locomotive engines. Again his life- 
plan was destined to be changed. After eight 
years at civil engineering, young Spencer was 
brought face to face with a crisis by the disasters 
which followed upon the great railway mania. In 
the reaction which followed, Spencer, with other 
young men similarly situated, suffered. The demand 
for new railways fell off, and consequently the de- 
mand for civil engineers. At the age of twenty-six 
Spencer had to begin the world afresh. He re- 
turned to his home in Derby. Meanwhile Spencer's 
mind had been branching out in other quarters 
besides civil engineering. He was musing upon 
political philosophy and science. In 1842 he con- 
tributed to a paper called The Nonconformist 
a series of articles on 'The Proper Sphere of 
Government.' These, after due season, appeared 
later in pamphlet form. In his home retreat 
at Derby his mind was still further matured 
by reading and thinking. Man, however, does not 
live by thought alone, so it behooved Spencer to turn 
his attention to the bread and butter side of life. 
He cast his eyes towards journalism, and after a 



1 



EARLY LIFE 17 

miscellaneous period he was, in 1848, in his own 
words, "invited to take the position of sub-editor of 
the Economist newspaper." This post he held till 
1853. In London he got his feet on the first rung of 
the ladder of fame. The history of his long, toil- 
some, and heroic ascent is mainly the record of the 
various stages of his mind in the conception and 
elaboration of that vast system of thought with 
which his name is imperishably associated. 



i 



CHAPTER II 

INTELLECTUAL ENVIKONMENT 

While engaged in tte work of a civil engineer, and 
before he settled in London, Spencer was quietly- 
pondering over the great intellectual problems of 
the time. Naturally he was led by his fondness for 
science to study the highest authorities in the vari- 
ous departments. At the age of twenty he began 
to study Lyell's Principles of Creology. Without 
demur he accepted the development as opposed to the 
special creation theory of the earth and man, though 
like the rest of his contemporaries he could not trace 
the process in its detail, nor understand its nature. 
In order to follow the evolution of young Spencer's 
mind it will be necessary to describe the intellectual 
environment in which it moved in those early days. 

The early years of the century were years of great 
fermentation, theological, philosophic, political, and 
social. The practical energies of the nation, freed 
from the great strain of the continental wars, found 
new outlet in the spheres of commerce and industry. 
Scientific study of nature, no longer tabooed by theol- 

18 



INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 19 

ogy, demonstrated its utility by an imposing record 
of inventions and discoveries, whose influence on the 
national prosperity was at once dramatic and all- 
embracing. Such a transformation of the industrial 
and social order could not take place without exert- 
ing a potent influence upon the higher thought of 
the time. Science, which in the practical sphere 
had achieved colossal triumphs, and given man power 
over nature, could not but be greatly influenced by 
the new forces which it had called into existence. 
Science as the worker of miracles became the idol of 
the hour : at its shrine the popular as well as the 
cultured intelligence of the day worshipped fer- 
vently. The printing-press teemed with books for 
the diffusion of useful knowledge, while to the more 
highly cultured the British Association, established 
in the first half of the century, proved itself a veri- 
table Mecca. The union between science and in- 
dustry had one effect — discoveries, inventions, and 
theories came pell mell, to the utter confusion of the 
methodical thinker, with his desire to reduce his 
intellectual knowledge to something like order. In 
the whirl of practical details, thought in the wide 
and comprehensive sense was paralyzed ; the wood 
could not be seen for the trees. In the midst of the 
jubilation over the advance of discovery, in the midst 
of the eulogiums over the material victories which \ 

Science had brought in its train, there were those \ 



20 HERBERT SPENCER 

who remembered that man does not live by facts 
alone, those who are ever ready to string facts on 
the thread of philosophic or scientific generalizations. 
Since the days of Bacon and his Novum Organum^ 
thinkers have cherished the ambition to discover 
knowledge by the slow but sure methods of science, 
and to weave that knowledge into one comprehensive 
whole. 

It soon became evident that a new theory of man 
and his relation to the Universe was following in the 
wake of science and its discoveries. In Scotland, 
the theological spirit, much as it wished, could not 
prevent the reading public from being influenced by 
such books as Combe's Constitution of Man, and the 
famous Vestiges of Creation. On the Continent the 
same spirit of scientific inquiry and theorizing was 
abroad. This desire of science not to remain con- 
tent with looking upon nature as a huge museum in 
which the highest aim was duly to ticket and label 
phenomena, found expression in Humboldt's Cosmos, 
which appeared in 1845. About the same time 
appeared Whewell's History and Philosophy of the 
Inductive Sciences, which was intended to be the 
continuation of the work of Bacon "renovated ac- 
cording to our advanced intellectual position and 
office." A thinker of the type of W he well labors 
under one distinct disadvantage — while he is en- 
gaged upon ultimate generalizations, discoveries are 



INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 21 

being made which may knock away the foundation 
of his entire cosmical structure. Tliis was precisely 
the fate of Whewell. As Merz says in his valuable 
work on European TliougJit : " In the year 1857, the 
date of the publication of the latest editions of Whew- 
ell's works, nothing was popularly known of energy, 
its conservation and dissipation, nothing of the varia- 
tion of species and the evolution of organic forms, 
nothing of the mechanical theory of heat or that of 
gases, of absolute measurements and absolute tem- 
perature ; even the cellular theory seems to have 
been popular only in Germany. And yet all the 
problems denoted by these now popular terms were 
then occupying, or had for many years occupied, the 
attention of the leading thinkers of that period. But 
we find no mention of them in Whewell's Works." 
Still, Whewell did great service to the cause of sci- 
entific thought. His was a bold attempt to reduce 
to something like coherence the confused mass of 
scientific knowledge. Underlying the book was the 
idea of the organic unity of the sciences ; and if he 
failed to realize his ideal, the reason lay not in his 
lack of insight, but in the fact that scientists had not 
then discovered by observation and experiment the 
marvellous unity of nature. 

The next great impetus to scientific thought came 
from Comte. In the history of scientific thought the 
name of Auguste Comte will always occupy an hon- 



22 HERBERT SPENCER 

ored place. It is customary to belittle Comte on 
account of his vagaries in connection with the Reli- 
gion of Humanity, but we must not allow his failings 
to blind us to the great work he did in the sphere of 
scientific thought. Science, as has been pointed out, 
had a bewildering effect upon the average mind. 
Along with the material blessings which came in 
its train. Science had incidentally come forward as 
a rival to Theology, as an interpreter of Man and 
the Universe. In the minds of many people, even 
thinkers of the caliber of Faraday, the theological 
and scientific conceptions lived comfortably side by 
side. But studious readers of the signs of the times 
had come to the conclusion that Theology and Sci- 
ence were deadly rivals, yet perplexity existed as to 
how they were related in the history of thought and 
speculation. It was the merit of Comte to attempt 
to show the position which Theology, Metaphysics, 
and Science hold in the progress of humanity. 
Whether or not we agree with his famous law of 
the three stages, this, at least, must be conceded — 
Comte by his law has rendered luminous a large tract 
of history which, in the hands of the average histo- 
rian, had been a perfect maze. In a rough sort of 
way we do get a fruitful view of human progress 
when we say with Comte that Theology failed in its 
interpretation of the Universe, because it busied itself 
with personal causes, while Metaphysics also went 



INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 23 

wide of the mark because it dealt in entities, whereas 
Science has been fruitful in so far as it has confined 
itself to the study of phenomena on the lines of 
observation and experiment. In the purely scientific 
sphere, Comte did great service in his efforts to 
show that progress does not take place at haphazard, 
as a superficial student of the history of discoveries 
and inventions is apt to think, but that through the 
seemingly aimless growth of science there is trace- 
able a definite law. Before Comte the various sci- 
ences were treated as so many distinct branches of 
man's knowledge of nature. Any classification which 
existed was of an artificial kind. For this Comte 
substituted a classification which had the note of 
organic unity. The sciences, according to him, are 
six in number : Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, 
Chemistry, Biology, and Sociology. The merit 
claimed for this arrangement by Comte is that the 
order of their classification is the order in which the 
sciences have been evolved — the order in which they 
have passed from the theological or metaphysical into 
the scientific stage. If we wish to learn how far 
scientific conceptions are gaining ground, we have a 
fairly reliable method if we apply the Comtean classi- 
fication. In Mathematics, Astronomy, and Physics, 
the scientific method pure and simple has long held 
sway. It is not, however, long since Chemistry and 
Biology were at the metaphysical stage, with its 



24 HERBERT SPENCER 

" vital principle " and such like entities, while in the 
region of Sociology prayers for success of war, for 
industrial prosperity, etc., show unmistakable signs 
of the theological stage. 

Valuable as was the work of Comte, it was vitiated 
by one great defect. In his antipathy to the study 
of causes, he was led to confuse two things which 
are quite distinct — final or theological, and efficient 
or mechanical cause. The result of this was that he 
refused to trace his six sciences to a common root. 
All attempts to get behind phenomena, even to the 
subtle laws and forces w^hich seemed to be the key to 
phenomena, were ruthlessly opposed by Comte. As 
"Ward, an American writer, puts it : " Among the most 
lamented of Comte's vagaries is his uncompromising 
hostility to all the modern hypotheses respecting the 
nature of light, heat, electricity, etc. He classed all 
these along with gravitation, and declared that all 
the efforts expended in the vain search after origin, 
nature, or cause were simply squandered. These 
agencies, according to him, were merely phenomena, 
and were to be studied only as such. The imaginary 
interstellar ether was an ontological conception or a 
metaphysical entity to be classed along with phlogis- 
ton and all the spirits of the laboratory and the imag- 
inary occupants of the bodies of men, animals, and 
inanimate objects. The undulatory theory of light 
was no better than the emission theory, and both 



INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 25 

equally vain attempts to know what from the nature 
of things cannot be known. In fact, the domain of 
the unknowable in Comte's philosophy was enormous 
in its extent, and when we contemplate the little that 
was left for man to do we almost wonder how he 
should have regarded it worth the labor of writing so 
large a work. The amount of mischief which this 
one glaring fallacy accomplished for Comte's system 
of Positivism, insinuating itself into every chapter, 
and more or less vitiating the real truths contained 
in the work, was so great as to give considerable 
color to the claim that pure Comtism, if it could be 
made to prevail and exert its legitimate influence 
upon human inquiry in the future, would so far crip- 
ple every department of science as to throw it back 
into mediaeval stagnation. For it would strike a 
fatal blow at all true progress in human knowledge 
by crushing out the very spirit of inquiry, and would 
quench all interest in phenomena themselves by pro- 
hibiting the search after the springs and sources — 
the causes — of the phenomena which furnish the 
true life and soul of scientific research." 

Comte failed to realize his ideal, for a reason which 
explains the slow progress that has hitherto been 
made in the great task of formulating a scientific 
philosophy of the Universe. For this two things 
are needed — vast accumulation of facts and great 
synthetic power. A scientist with nothing but a 



26 HERBERT SPENCER 

passion for facts is simply an intellectual hodman, 
whose relation to the philosophical scientist is that of 
a bricklayer's laborer to the architect. On the other 
hand, great speculative power working upon imper- 
fect knowledge leads often to sheer absurdity. Wit- 
ness Germany with its natural philosophy. The 
ideal condition is one in which fact and theory go 
hand-in-hand. Comte came as near as was possible 
in his day to providing a scientific key to Nature. 
All that was needed was for Comte to discover and 
formulate the law of unity, which, like a golden 
thread, runs through his six sciences. For logical 
purposes, it is necessary to treat the various sciences 
as if they stood for separate independent classes of 
facts in Nature, but the discoveries which were tak- 
ing place just at the close of Comte's career substi- 
tuted the dynamic for the statical conception of 
Nature. Herbert Spencer profited by the new con- 
ception of Nature of which Comte was unable to take 
advantage. From the point of view of the scientific 
thinker, the dominating fact of the century may be 
defined as a new conception of Nature. Until Spencer 
began to write, the conception of Nature was that 
of a colossal machine, the various parts of which 
were specially manufactured to fit into their respec- 
tive places. Unity, of course, there was, but the 
unity was in the mind of the Supernatural Mechanic, 
not in the material of which the machine was con- 



INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 27 

structed. Alike in the works of scientists and theo- 
logians of the early century, we find a total absence 
of the thought of organic unity as applied to the 
Cosmos. Not only did the thinkers of the time fail 
to hit upon the great fact of the unity of the Cosmos, 
but they had resigned themselves to the view that it 
was impossible to make such a discovery. Caught 
in the meshes of a false philosophic method, the phi- 
losophers of the Rational school placed an arbitrary 
limit to speculation. Mill's Logic was the text-book 
of the school. Mill's admiration of Comte finds 
explanation in the fact that the great Frenchman had 
carried the method of induction in interpretation of 
the Universe to what seemed to be its utmost limit. 
According to Mill, knowledge resolves itself into a 
recognition of particulars. What we call a law is 
simply a recorded observation that phenomena follow 
each other in a regular order. There is no inherent 
necessity that phenomena should be inter-related. 
Comte's law of the sciences determined nothing as to 
the necessary relations between the six sciences which 
he named. : all that could be said was that the human 
mind in the course of its progress came to a knowl- 
edge of the sciences in the way indicated by Comte. 
Mill, like Comte, considered that scientific men were 
going beyond the inductions of experience when they 
endeavored to attribute to Nature any kind of inlier- 
ent regularity and necessity. Hence his remark that 



28 HERBERT SPENCER 

in some after planet the axiom that two and two make 
four might not hold. With Mill a scientific philoso- 
phy had done its work when it revealed the exist- 
ence of a number of apparently permanent laws whose 
inter-relation were undiscoverable, and upon which 
the regularity of the Cosmos depended. Mill's con- 
ception of the world was that of a collection of facts 
grasped by the mind by virtue of the law of associa- 
tion — facts existing by no inherent necessity, but 
resting in the last analysis on the arbitrary and the 
accidental. In our Cosmos these facts exist in one 
way; elsewhere the connection might be totally dif- 
ferent. Thus, as Taine puts it, the Experiential 
philosophy, the philosophy which plumed itself upon 
refusing to go a step beyond Induction, ends in " an 
abyss of chance, an abyss of ignorance." 

Here we have the explanation of Mill's curious 
attitude to religion, as revealed in his posthumous 
essays. At bottom Mill's conception was that of 
Theology, with its postulation of an unknown cause 
which at any time may reveal itself in an arbitrary 
manner. Mill was bound to admit that things need 
not necessarily exist in the connection in which we 
now find them. At any moment the connection 
might be severed ; consequently he was driven to 
admit that the question of miracles really turned on 
the question of evidence. We find the same curious 
sympathy with theological conceptions in Huxley, 



INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 29 

who was constantly throwing a sop to the theolo- 
gians, in the admission that he was quite ready 
to believe the most profound mysteries in religion, 
if the evidence were forthcoming, on the ground" 
that Science contains as many mysteries as anything 
to be found in Theology. In other words, Huxley, 
like Mill, contended that it was not possible to 
detect in Nature any facts held together by neces- 
sity. Comte, Mill, and Huxley never got beyond 
the interpretative standpoint of Hume, whose Ag- 
nosticism, it should be remembered, extended to 
science as well as to theology. We shall see later 
that Spencer's contribution to a scientific conception 
of the Universe consisted in going beyond Hume, 
Comte, and Mill, in the direction of including all 
generalizations under one generalization, and in 
supplementing the inductive method by the deduc- 
tive, thereby demonstrating the necessary and 
organic unity of the Cosmos. So much for the 
scientific conceptions of the Universe which were 
prevalent among advanced thinkers when Spencer 
began to study science in a broad and comprehensive 
manner. Along with the scientific was the philo- 
sophic conception, which also formed one of the 
factors in his intellectual environment. 

The French Revolution will always remain a land- 
mark in modern history. If the student of history 
desires to understand the lines of modern thought 



30 HERBERT SPENCER 

and life, he must go back to that great political and 
social upheaval. It is a mistake to suppose that the 
Revolution exhausted its influence mainly in the 
sphere of public activity. In all departments its 
reactionary elfect was felt, and in none more so than 
in Philosophy. What do we mean by Philosophy ? 
The answer to that will be easier when we consider 
what is meant by Science. Science has been defined 
as the systematization of our knowledge of phe- 
nomena. In a word. Science deals with the modes 
of existence ; Philosophy with the nature of exist- 
ence. It is clear that the conceptions which Phi- 
losophy forms of the nature of existence will react 
powerfully on the conception which Science will 
form of the modes of existence. Assume that 
Matter is the ultimate fact, and you are logically 
committed to a materialistic conception of Mind and 
of Society — a conception which must have far- 
reaching influence upon individual and social evolu- 
tion. If we wish, then, to find the key to the 
development of the nineteenth century, we must go 
back and try to discover the philosophical concep- 
tions which dominated the previous era. The 
apostles of the Age of Reason adopted Materialism 
as their philosophic creed. Voltaire and Rousseau 
were Deists, but the influential party in revolu- 
tionary circles were undoubtedly Materialists. The 
creed of Diderot and his apostles was summed up in 



INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 31 

Holbach's famous System of Nature, in which eveiy- 
thing, from the movements of the solar masses to 
the movements of the soul, was interpreted in terms 
of matter. Even before the Revolution the dreari'- 
ness of the French philosophy struck the highest 
minds of the time with a kind of despair. Thus 
Goethe says: "The materialistic theory which re- 
duces all things to matter and motion appeared 
to me so gray, so Cimmerian, and so dead, that we 
shuddered at it as at a ghost." 

Its downfall was inevitable when the Age of Rea- 
son ended in a carnival of diabolism. As George 
Henry Lewes puts it : " The reaction against the 
philosophy of the eighteenth century was less a re- 
action against a doctrine, proved to be incompetent 
than against a doctrine believed to be the source 
of frightful immorality. The reaction was vigorous, 
because it was animated by the horror which agitated 
Europe at the excesses of the French Revolution. 
Associated in men's minds with the saturnalia of 
the Terror, the philosophic opinions of Condillac, 
Diderot, and Cabanis were held responsible for the 
crimes of the Convention; and what might be true 
in those opinions was flung aside with what was 
false, without discrimination, without analysis, in 
fierce, impetuous disgust. Every opinion which had 
what was called a taint of Materialism, or seemed 
to point in that direction, was denounced as an 



32 HERBERT SPENCER 

opinion unnecessary, leading to the destruction of 
all religion, morality, and government." In the 
reaction which followed the French Revolution, we 
have a vivid illustration of the close connection 
which exists between philosophy and everyday life. 
The sudden contempt into which Materialism fell 
may be taken as an instinctive, though irrational, 
testimony to the intimate relation which exists be- 
tween abstract thought and concrete life. It may 
be taken for granted that the conceptions which peo- 
ple form of the Universe and of their relation to it 
will largely influence the nature of the social bond. 
Morality and human ideals generally cannot remain 
unaffected by theories which make Matter or Spirit 
the root-principle of the great cosmical scheme. In 
Holbach's System of Nature we have the material- 
istic theory worked out logically into a comprehen- 
sive ethical and sociological creed. In the famous 
French Encyelopcedia of Sciences Materialism had 
formal embodiment as a system of philosophy. 
Nature was viewed simply as a piece of mechanism, 
man as the product of a complex molecular arrange- 
ment, mind the development of animal sensations, 
morality as a phase of self-interest, religion as a 
product of emotional hallucination, and government 
as an ingenious arrangement between despotic kings 
and designing priests to keep the people in slavery. 
When the crash came it was natural that the whole 



INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 33 

scheme of Materialistic Philosophy should totter to 
the ground. What was to take its place ? 

Naturally thinkers looked around for a set of first 
principles which would give repose to their minds 
as well as stability to the social sj'^stem. The Cath- 
olic section, headed by de Maistre ; the Royalists, 
inspired by Chateaubriand ; and the Metaphysicians, 
stimulated by the Eclectic School of Cousin, united 
their forces against Materialism. For a time Eclec- 
ticism held the field, but the work of construction 
both in France and Britain needed a new set of 
first principles which neither nation could supply. 
The constructive principles were imported from Ger- 
many. The Germans — Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and 
Hegel — attacked the problem of Existence from the 
spiritual instead of from the material side. To the 
Materialists, French and English, of the Revolution 
school, the Germans said that the great mystery 
of Being was insoluble by mechanical methods. 
Reduce Matter, they said, to its constituent atoms 
and you fail to seize the principle of life ; it 
evades you like a spirit. With the Germans — 
especially Hegel — Cosmology and Psychology grew 
naturally out of Ontology : Nature and Man were 
incarnations of the Absolute. Coleridge and Car- 
lyle, in their own peculiar ways, vigorously com- 
bated the Materialistic Philosophy with its denial 
of necessary truth, its repudiation of religion, and 



34 HERBERT SPENCER 

its substitution of Utilitarianism for a moral sense. 
What Carlyle and Coleridge did for the cultured 
class generally Sir William Hamilton did for the 
purely philosophic section. Though one part of his 
philosophy — the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowl- 
edge — has been used in the interests of Agnosticism, 
the general drift of his influence was anti-material- 
istic. How formidable a foe he was may be judged 
by the elaborate attempt of Mill to discredit Ham- 
ilton as an authority. The contrast between the 
two philosophies is well put by Mill in his essay on 
Coleridge. Mill says : " The German-Coleridgian 
doctrine expresses the revolt of the human mind 
against the philosophy of the eighteenth century. 
It is ontological, because that was experimental ; 
conservative, because that was innovative ; religious, 
because that was abstract and metaphysical ; poet- 
ical, because that was matter-of-fact and prosaic." 
Political circumstances were soon to lead to a re- 
vival of the Experiential as opposed to the Intui- 
tive school, the school of Hume, Diderot, and Mill, 
as opposed to Kant and his British interpreters. 
With the peace of 1815 the old despotism, under the 
name of the Holy Alliance, began to press heavily 
upon Europe. People forgot the evils of Anarchy 
under pressure of present despotism. Institutions 
which were looked upon as refuges from the Revolu- 
tionary storm were now used as prison-houses for 



INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 35 

the free spirit of man. A philosophy which tended 
to prop up existing institutions, to justify existing 
beliefs, and, when questioned, to fall back upon 
innate ideas, intuitions of the mind — such a philoso- 
phy became the natural target of thinkers of reform- 
ing proclivities. It was not without reason that the 
political Radicals of the early years of the century 
were bitter opponents of the Intuitive School. Mill 
senior and Bentham did much to pave the way for 
the revival of Empiricism, but the philosopher of the 
sect was John Stuart Mill. 

In Mill's hands Empiricism lost its old fanaticism. 
So long as a tliinker of materialistic tendencies never 
gets beyond the popular ideas of Matter he will have 
no difficulty in finding in experience a steadfast 
ground of certainty. But Mill was too well versed 
in psychology, was too acute a thinker, to find repose 
in the materialism of the old school. By sheer stress 
of logic, Mill was driven close to Hume's position by 
his definition of Matter as a permanent possibility of 
sensation, and Mind as a permanent possibility of 
feeling. With such a hesitating and uncertain cos- 
mological and psychological creed, it is easy to under- 
stand Mill's contention that in science there is no 
such thing as necessary truth ; in ethics no such 
thing as moral intuition ; and in politics no such 
thing as authoritative belief : over every department 
hangs a cloud of uncertainty. In his remarkably 



36 HERBERT SPENCER 

suggestive book on British philosophy, Professor 
Masson puts this characteristic of Mill's whole 
philosophy very well when he says : " Mr. Mill's 
logic corresponds with what the science of logic 
could alone be consistently with his fundamental 
psychological principle. It could not be like the 
old logic and Hamilton's logic, a science of the 
necessary laws of thought, but only a science of the 
method of quest after experimental truth or proba- 
bility. So in his fine essay on liberty the radical 
idea is that one can never be surer of anything, be 
it even the forty-seventh proposition of the first 
book of Euclid, than in proportion as the chances of 
contradiction are exhausted ; and the high value set 
thus upon human freedom, and even upon eccentric- 
ity of thought and action, seems to be grounded on 
the conviction that the human race can never know 
what it may attain to in the shape either of knowl- 
edge or of power, until it has sent out a rush of the 
largest number of individual energies simultane- 
ously, and with the least restraint from law or 
custom, in all directions. As for the essay on Utilita- 
rianism, it is expressly a restatement of Paley's and 
Bentham's theory of expediency as the sole possible 
foundation of morals, but with a suggestion of this 
higher and more exquisite definition of expediency 
characteristic of Mr. Mill, that it means the largest 
possible amount of pleasure, and the least possible 



INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 37 

amount of pain, not to you or me or this age or all 
mankind only, but to the sum-total of sentient exist- 
ence. In short, if I am not mistaken, Mr. Mill's 
writings prove that if he thinks of any one particu- 
lar mode of thought among his contemporaries as 
being more than any other chargeable with the total 
mass of obstruction, fallacy, and misery that yet rolls 
in the heart of society, as being more than any other 
the False God or Baal or Moloch of the human mind 
— it is the theory of necessary beliefs." 

In all this Mill was thoroughly consistent. Hav- 
ing failed to discover any inherent necessity in the 
Cosmos, he was unable to find any such necessity in 
the mind of man. Effective enough in its polemic 
against the reigning Intuitionalism as represented 
by Hamilton, Empiricism, even in the hands of an 
acute thinker like Mill, was incapable of returning 
satisfactory answers to the fundamental problems of 
Psychology. In regard to the root-question, that 
relating to the constitution and function of the 
mind. Mill remained virtually at the position of 
Locke. With Mill, as with Locke, the mind was a 
blank sheet of paper, upon which, by means of the 
law of association, experience was duly registered 
and transformed into coherent knowledge. In such 
a system there was no room for a ■priori ideas ; all 
was traceable to experience. So far good, but 
experience showed that in the mind certain beliefs 



38 HERBERT SPENCER 

impressed themselves with an intuitive force and 
an absoluteness which found no explanation in 
the experience of the individual. The axioms of 
geometry and of causality were not reached by the 
individual through a purely inductive process. How 
were these to be explained? Before Empiricism 
could give a rational answer to this question it had 
to come under the transforming influence of the 
evolutionary idea. In Psychology as in Cosmology 
Spencer's contribution was so original as to trans- 
form the old Experiential system of Mill, and bring 
to an end the long-standing feud between the 
Intuitionalists and the Experientialists. That will 
be explained in all detail later. Meanwhile, it was 
necessary, in order to understand the revolution 
worked by Spencer in philosophy, to have a clear 
conception of the problems which came before him 
for solution. 



CHAPTER III 

EVOLUTION OF THE EVOLUTION THEORY 

It is a mistake to suppose that when he began 
his studies Spencer set himself consciously and 
deliberately to discover the unifying root of 
Nature's multiform manifestations. At first his 
mind was mainly directed to questions of a politico- 
social nature. In the early years of the century, 
political thinkers were greatly exercised about Gov- 
ernment, its nature and limits. Brought up in a 
democratic circle, inheriting the traditions of Lib- 
eralism on the side of religious dissent and politi- 
cal Radicalism, it was natural that Spencer's early 
thoughts should run in a sociological direction. 
Ever in search of first principles, it was also natural 
that he should endeavor to seek the scientific basis 
of Government. As the earliest products of his 
thinking, his letters on The Proper Sphere of Grov- 
e7'7iment, published in the Nonconformist newspaper 
in 1842, and republished in pamphlet form in 1843, 
demand attention. In these letters we find emphatic 
insistence on the view that social phenomena con- 

39 



40 HERBERT SPENCER 

form to invariable laws: the ethical progress of man 
as due to social discipline, the spontaneous nature of 
society, with a consequent discouragement of State 
interference and control. Not satisfied with his 
treatment of the subject, Mr. Spencer resolved to 
deal with it on a more comprehensive scale. In 
1850 appeared Social Statics, the object of which 
was to base his practical views of the nature and 
scope of Government on a coherent set of first prin- 
ciples. At a later stage of the present work, when 
dealing with Sociology, an attempt will be made to 
show the nature of Spencer's contributions to 
political science as compared with the speculations 
of previous thinkers from Locke to Mill. Mean- 
while, in tracing the evolution of Mr. Spencer's 
mind, it is necessary to point out that in Social 
Statics are to be found the germs of those pregnant 
speculations which were to lead to the far-reaching 
cosifiical generalization which, like a magnet, gathers 
to itself the scattered detached fragments of scientific 
thought. 

In Social Statics we find Mr. Spencer giving 
expression to his dissatisfaction with the prevailing 
school of political thought, with which he was, on 
the practical side, in close sympathy — namely, the 
Utilitarian school. He felt that on the philosophic 
side Utilitarianism, as defined by Bentham and his 
followers, lacked theoretic stability. Spencer set 



EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 41 

himself to ask and answer the questions — What is 
society ? and What are the relations between man 
the unit and society the mass ? In harmony with 
their fundamental principle, the Utilitarians founded 
their conception of society on Induction. Men, they 
recognized, all made happiness the goal of their 
endeavor. Society is composed of numbers of men 
in search of happiness; consequently the highest 
type of society would be one in which the greatest 
number of its members enjoyed the greatest amount 
of happiness. 

Here, as in science and philosophy, the school of 
Bentham and Mill displayed the arbitrary nature 
of their fundamental principle. No attempt was 
made to demonstrate the necessary connection 
between individual and social happiness and the 
general laws of life. Man was viewed from the 
statical standpoint. Human nature was treated 
after the style of the eighteenth century philos- 
ophers as a stable product. Human nature is 
everywhere the same, summed up the eighteenth 
century point of view. The evils of society were 
held to be due to bad governments. Let legisla- 
tion aim at the greatest happiness of the greatest 
number, and all will go well. Now such a mode 
of reasoning did not commend itself to Spencer. 
He argued that before an all-embracing social law 
can be legislatively formulated, we must first dis- 



42 HERBERT SPENCER 

cover what society is, and how man the unit 
stands related to society. We must not rest con- 
tent with induction : we must discover the necessary 
bond between the unit and the mass. And when 
that is accomplished, we may be in a position to 
deduce the necessary laws of that relationship. 
Manifestly at the outset an answer had to be 
given to this question — Is society a natural or an 
artificial product? The rationalist thinkers of the 
eighteenth century favored the view that society 
was an artificial product. 

Rousseau, with his famous theory of a state of 
nature, simply gave expression in exaggerated form 
to the idea generally entertained that society was 
largely the result of manufacture, of deliberate 
design, too often the outcome of base motives. 
Governments held an exaggerated importance in 
the minds, not only of the eighteenth century 
thinkers, but also of the school of Philosophic 
Radicals — the Mills and the Benthams. Even John 
Stuart Mill, in his book on Representative Govern- 
ment, shows traces of this view by his constant 
anxiety lest, in the absence of political checks and 
counterchecks, society should proceed along wrong 
lines. Society, up till Spencer wrote his Social 
Statics, was viewed almost exclusively from the 
political side. Spencer changed the point of view 
from the political to the biological. It is a common 



EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 43 

objection to the Spencerian system of thought that 
it is simply a revival in modern times of the a priori 
methods of the Schoolmen — a kind of materialistic 
Hegelism in which facts are made to fit a pre-con- 
ceived theoretic framework. Nothing could be 
further from the truth. I confess myself to have 
held some such view. With many others I supposed 
that Spencer had started consciously with a vast 
cosmical theory, and had then explored the realm 
of science for illustrations and verifications. In 
conversation Mr. Spencer assured me that such was 
not the case. He began with fact; he stuck by 
the inductive process ; and it was only at a certain 
stage of his scientific exploration that the thought 
flashed across his mind that the law of biological 
and social evolution is a universal process, traceable 
in the cosmical changes and in the latest results of 
civilization. But we do not need to rely upon 
conversation on this point. In one of his essays, 
Reasons for Dissenting from M. Comte^ there is an 
interesting autobiographic statement. In reply to 
those who classed him erroneously as a follower of 
Comte, Spencer says : " And now let me point out 
that which really has exercised a profound influence 
over my course of thought. The truth which 
Harvey's embryological inquiries first dimly indi- 
cated, which was afterwards more clearly perceived 
by Wolff, and which was put into a definite shape 



44 HERBERT SPENCER 

by Von Baer — the truth that all organic develop- 
ment is a change from a state of homogeneity to a 
state of heterogeneity — this it is from which very 
many of the conclusions which I now hold have in- 
directly resulted. In Social Statics there is every- 
where manifested a dominant belief in the evolution 
of man and of society. There is also manifested 
the belief that this evolution is in both cases deter- 
mined by the incidents of conditions — the actions 
of circumstances. And there is further, in the 
sections already referred to, a recognition of the 
fact that organic and social evolution conform to 
the same law. Falling amid beliefs in evolutions 
of various orders, everywhere determined by natural 
causes (beliefs again displayed in the Theory of 
Population and in the Principles of Psychology) ; 
the formula of Von Baer set up a process of organ- 
ization. The extension of it to other kinds of 
phenomena than those of individual and social 
bodies is traceable through successive stages. It 
may be seen in the last paragraph of an essay on 
The Philosophy of Style^ published in October, 1852 ; 
again in an essay on Manners and Fashion^ published 
in April, 1854 ; and then in a comparativelj'" ad- 
vanced form in an essay on Progress : Its Law and 
Cause, published in April, 1857. Afterwards there 
came the recognition of the need for modifying 
Von Baer's formula by including the trait of in- 



EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 45 

creasing definiteness ; next the inquiry into those 
general laws of force from which this universal 
transformation necessarily results ; next the deduc- 
tion of these from the ultimate law of the persist-' 
ence of force ; next the perception that there is 
everywhere a process of Dissolution complementary 
to that of Evolution ; and finally the determination 
of the conditions under which Evolution and Dis- 
solution occur. The filiation of these results is, 
I think, tolerably manifest. The process has been 
one of continuous development set up by the addi- 
tion of Von Baer's law to a number of others that 
were in harmony with it." 

In Appleton's Popular Science Monthly for Feb- 
ruary, 1897, there appeared an article on Mr. Spen- 
cer, by Professor Hudson of California, in which the 
evolution of Mr. Spencer's mind is minutely traced, 
by the aid of an important letter on the subject 
from Mr. Spencer himself. Professor Hudson says : 
" I am fortunate in having before me as I write a 
letter in which he was kind enough to outline for 
me the important stages in his progress toward the 
great doctrines of the synthetic philosophy. If, in 
following his account and in occasionally reproduc- 
ing, as I shall venture to do, his own words, I am 
forced to touch again upon points already brought 
out, this will scarcely be deemed ground for regret, 
since the slight repetition involved will serve per- 



46 HERBERT SPENCER 

haps to throw the whole subject into clearer relief. 
The simple nucleus of his philosophic system first 
made its appearance in Social /Statics, where, in the 
chapter entitled ' General Considerations,' mention 
is made of the biological truth that low types of 
animals are composed of many like parts not mutu- 
ally dependent, while higher animals are composed 
of parts that are unlike and are mutually dependent. 
This, he writes, 'was an induction which I had 
reached in the course of biological studies — mainly, 
I fancy, while attending Professor Owen's lectures 
on the Vertebrate Skeleton.' With this was joined 
the statement that the same is true of societies, 
'which begin with many like parts not mutually 
dependent, and end with many like parts that are 
mutually dependent.' This also was an induction. 
'And then in the joining of these came the induction 
that the individual organism and the social organism 
followed this law.' Thus the radical conception of 
the entire system took shape before Mr. Spencer had 
become acquainted with Von Baer's law, which, as 
we have seen, did not occur till two years later. 
This law, though applying to the unfolding of the 
individual only, had none the less its use. In fur- 
nishing the expression ' from homogeneity to hetero- 
geneity,' it presented a more convenient intellectual 
implement. ' By its brevity and its applicability to 
all orders of phenomena, it served for thinking much 



EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 47 

better than the preceding generalization, which 
contained the same essential thought.' The essays 
which followed Social Statics were marked by the 
establishment of various separate inductions in- 
which other groups of phenomena were brovight 
under this large principle, while in the first edition 
of the PsycJiology, not only was the same principle 
shown to comprehend mental phenomena, but there 
was also recognized the primary law of evolution — 
integration and increase of definiteness. What 
followed may best be given in Mr. Spencer's own 
words : ' Then it was that there suddenly arose in 
me the conception that the law which I had sepa- 
rately recognized in various groups of phenomena 
was a universal law applying to the whole Cosmos : 
the many small inductions were merged in the large 
inductions. And only after this largest induction 
had been formed did there arise the question — 
Why? Only then did I see that the universal cause 
for the universal transformations was the multipli- 
cation of effects, and that they might be deduced 
from the law of the multiplication of effects. The 
same thing happened at later stages. The generali- 
zation which innnediately preceded the publication 
of the essay on Progress : Its Law and Cause — the 
instability of the homogeneous — was also an in- 
duction. So was the direction of motion and the 
rhythm of motion. Then, having arrived at these 



48 HERBERT SPENCER 

derivative causes of the universal transformation, it 
presently dawned upon me (in consequence of the 
recent promulgation of the doctrine of the conserva- 
tion of force) that all these derivative causes were 
sequences from that universal cause. The question 
had, I believe, arisen, Why these several derivative 
laws ? and that came as the answer. Only then did 
there arise the idea of developing the whole of the 
universal transformation from the persistence of 
force. So you see the process began by being 
inductive and ended by being deductive ; and this 
is the peculiarity of the method followed. On the 
one hand, I was never content with any truth 
remaining in the inductive form. On the other 
hand, I was never content with allowing a deductive 
interpretation to go unverified by reference to the 
facts.' " The cautious method of induction employed 
is evident from this extract, and is a sufficient 
answer to those who twit Mr. Spencer with dealing 
purely in hypothesis. Mr. Spencer's great original- 
ity will be found to consist in the unique manner in 
which he has combined the two processes, inductive 
and deductive. He has taken away the reproach of 
empiricism from scientific thought, and the reproach 
of vague theorizing from philosophic thought. 
Thus slowly and unconsciously was Mr. Spencer 
drawn on to the path of his great discovery. His 
studies in biological and social science, as has been 



EVOLUTION OP^ EVOLUTION THEORY 49 

shown, led him to formulate a law of change and 
progress, which he suddenly discovered to be the 
law of all change and progress. 

Notwithstanding Mr. Spencer's protests against 
being classed as a Comtist, the impression still 
largely prevails that in aim and method Spencerism 
and Positivism are fundamentally alike. That they 
are fundamentally different will be evident from 
comparison of the two systems. With Spencer the 
task of philosophy was to search for the unifying 
root of the Cosmos. The task of the scientist is to 
discover the widest generalizations in particular 
divisions of the Cosmos. He formulates the laws 
of mechanics, of chemistry, of biology, psychology, 
and sociology. Is it possible to go beyond these 
generalizations ? Is it possible still further to 
combine the generalizations of science under one 
supreme generalization, without abandoning the 
methods of induction and deduction ? Are the great 
divisions of phenomena arbitrary divisions, the 
result of the principle of the division of labor ? 
Or is it possible to proceed still further, and show 
that the various sciences represent separate yet 
closely related stages in the development of the 
Cosmos — stages which are not arbitrary departments 
devised by man for intellectual convenience, but 
parts of one all-embracing process ? In other words, 
is the Cosmos from star to soul pervaded by one law, 



50 HERBERT SPENCER 

or must we be content with the view that a rigorous 
analysis brings us down to a number of Permanent 
Causes or Laws which cannot be reduced to an ulti- 
mate unity ? Comte held distinctly by the view 
that all attempts to reduce phenomena to a single 
law were chimerical. Such attempts he declared 
to be as futile as the old theological theorizings 
about a First Cause. Man's business, according to 
Comte, "is to analyze accurately the circumstances 
of phenomena and to connect them by the natural 
relations of succession and resemblance." Failing 
to distinguish between final and efficient Causes, 
Comte unwittingly put an arbitrary limit to human 
inquiry. Content with noting the order of phenom- 
ena, he denied with scorn the right of the intellect 
to seek for the cosmical causes of phenomena. In 
harmony with his view Comte treated with contempt 
the cell doctrine, which, even while he was writ- 
ing, was revolutionizing physiological science ; he 
tabooed all inquiries into the origin of the human 
race, he was hostile to all hypothesis about the 
nature of heat, light, electricity. Because The- 
ology in its search for origins had taken the wrong 
road, he would prohibit the search altogether, for- 
getful of the fact that knowledge which limits itself 
to the mere noting of co-existences and resem- 
blances among phenomena remains at the empirical 
stage. On the other hand, the Spencerian philoso- 



EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 51 

phy rests upon the possibility of framing, in relation 
to the Cosmos as a whole, a generalization which 
shall be verifiable in detail. According to Spencer, 
the duty of Philosophy is, taking its stand upon the 
widest truths formulated by Science, to form a gen- 
eralization which shall link all phenomena into one 
organic whole. Comte denied the possibility of any 
such universal Synthesis. He included in one 
sweeping condemnation philosophies of the Cosmos 
as well as theologies of the Cosmos. Manifestly 
Spencerism and Comtism cannot be in fundamental 
agreement when Comte passionately denounces pre- 
cisely the speculative methods and results which 
have constituted the life-work of Mr. Spencer. Mr. 
Spencer was not indebted for his fundamental ideas 
to Comte, for the simple reason that not only had 
Comte no fundamental ideas about the Cosmos, but 
he denounced as metaphysicians or theologians in 
disguise all who ventured to formulate such ideas. 
In short, Spencer could not be indebted to Comte 
for his philosophy of the Cosmos, because Comte had 
no philosophy of the Cosmos : he put it forward as 
his chief title to fame that he had none. 

But, it will be said, Comte claimed to be the 
author of the Positivist Philosophy. It will not do, 
in order to establish the originality of Mr. Spencer, 
to assert that Comte was no philosopher, in face of 
the fact that it is as a philosopher that he is known 



52 HEEBERT SPENCER 

to history. Witliin certain definitely prescribed 
limits Comte was a philosopher, and deserves credit 
for producing new and fruitful conceptions of great 
value ; but their value is historical and sociological, 
not cosmical. Banishing the idea of efficient cause, 
Comte quite logically was brought to a full stop at 
his six sciences. Beyond these he could not go. 
Here induction had completed its work, and all that 
an empirical philosophy could do was to show the 
historic relation between the sciences, and organize 
them in a social direction. This constituted Comte's 
originality. Having dismissed as futile all inquiries 
into causes which lay beyond the methods of the 
museum and the laboratory, having relegated ulti- 
mate laws to the region of the Unknown, Comte 
was compelled to organize his philosophy round 
Humanity instead of the Cosmos. All speculations 
which had no direct relation to human well-being 
were placed by him in the same category as theology. 
Such a contracted view of man's intellectual capa- 
bilities gradually transformed his philosophy into a 
religion in which intelligence was discouraged and 
authority elevated to the front rank as a factor in 
human progress. Conclusive evidence has been 
adduced to show that Mr. Spencer's conception of 
philosophy is fundamentally different from that of 
Comte. Spencer's view of causation, with his insist- 
ence upon the necessary co-relations of phenomena 



EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 53 

as distinguished from customary association, marks 
off his system completely from the Empiricism of 
Hume, Mill, and Comte, while his sociological like 
his cosmical conceptions have nothing in common 
with the Positivist system ; in fact, the two systems 
agree only in their acceptance of those ideas which 
are held by all scientific thinkers, as opposed to theo- 
logical conceptions of Man and the Universe. Mean- 
while, before proceeding to study Mr. Spencer the 
philosopher, a few pages may fitly be devoted to Mr. 
Spencer the man. 



CHAPTER IV 

PEKSONAL CHAEACTERISTICS 

The ten years from 1850, when lie published his 
first book, Social Statics, till 1860, when he issued 
the prospectus of his Synthetic Philosophy, were fruit- 
ful to Mr. Spencer both socially and intellectually. 
Although his writings were not popular, they 
brought him into notice in circles where high think- 
ing was sure to be appreciated. The intervals of 
leisure enjoyed while on the staff of the Economist 
Mr. Spencer utilized in contributing to the leading 
reviews, notably the Westminster, which at that time 
had as sub-editor Mary Ann Evans, destined later to 
take the world by storm as George Eliot. In the 
Life of Creorge Eliot are to be found a number of 
interesting references to the rising philosopher. In 
a letter to Mr. Bray about the end of September 
1851, George Eliot writes : " On Friday we had 
Foxton, Wilson, and some other nice people, among 
others a Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has just brought 
out a large work on Social Statics, which Lewes 
pronounces the best book he has seen on the sub- 

54 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 55 

ject." In another letter to the Brays a year after 
she says : " I went to the opera on Saturday, at 
Covent Garden, with my ' excellent friend Herbert 
Spencer,' as Lewes calls him. We have agreed that- 
there is no reason why we should not have as much 
of each other's society as we like. He is a good, 
delightful creature, and I always feel better for 
being with him." Writing to Miss Sara Hennell 
she expresses herself thus : " My brightest spot, next 
to my love of old friends, is the deliciously calm new 
friendship that Herbert Spencer gives me. We see 
each other every day, and have a delightful cama- 
raderie in everything. But for him my life would 
be desolate enough." Again : " Herbert Spencer 
dined with us to-day — looks well, and is brimful of 
clever talk as usual. His volume of Essays is to 
come out soon. He is just now on a crusade against 
the notion of Species." But perhaps the most inter- 
esting reference is to be found in the extract from 
the diary of George Henry Lewes, under date Janu- 
ary 28, 1859 : " Walked along the Thames towards 
Kew to meet Herbert Spencer, who was to spend the 
day with us, and we chatted with him on matters 
personal and philosophical. I owe him a debt of 
gratitude. My acquaintance with him was the 
brightest ray in a very dreary, toasted period of my 
life. I had given up all ambition whatever, lived 
from hand to mouth, and thought the evil of each 



66 HERBERT SPENCER 

day sufficient. The stimulus of his intellect, es- 
pecially during our long walks, roused my energy 
once more, and revived my dormant love of science. 
His intense theorizing tendency was contagious, and 
it was only the stimulus of a theory which could 
then have induced me to work. I owe Spencer 
another and deeper debt. It was through him that 
I learned to know Marian — to know her was to love 
her — and since then my life has been a new birth. 
To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happi- 
ness. God bless her." In regard to the concluding 
remarks, rumor has it that Lewes supplanted Spen- 
cer in the affections of George Eliot. This is not 
the case. Mr. Spencer's relations with George Eliot 
from first to last rested on the basis of friendship 
pure and simple. 

The reference by Lewes to Mr. Spencer's theoriz- 
ing tendency needs to be supplemented by reference 
to his passion for facts. He is equally removed 
from the hodmen of science who are content to 
throw down before their readers a confused mass of 
facts, and the fantastic theorists who weave cosmic 
speculations out of their inner consciousness. It is 
said of Cuvier that from the examination of a bone 
he could in his mind construct the entire animal. 
To Spencer a fact is valuable in so far as it enables 
him to place it in organic relation with other facts 
in an interpretative scheme of thought. He possesses 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 57 

an instinctive insight into the value of facts. The 
combination in his mind of philosophic and scientific 
qualities, strange as it may seem, has somewhat 
retarded his fame. The philosopher who soars into 
cloudland blames Mr. Spencer for his utilitarian 
habits of thought, his constant reference to reality, 
and his resolute refusal to take imaginative flights. 
The men of science, on the other hand, are quite 
willing to admit his philosophic powers, but they are 
jealous of a thinker who has assimilated the results 
of science without having gone through the usual 
apprenticeship in the museum and the laboratory. 
Rather than frankly admit that in Mr. Spencer's 
mind the philosophical and scientific tendencies are 
uniquely blended, his opponents pursue a policy of 
detraction, with the hope of discrediting his influ- 
ence as a speculative thinker and as a master of 
scientific method. 

Reference has already been made to Mr. Spencer's 
great expository power. In regard to this Dr. 
Hooker once remarked, " He talks like a book." It 
is not to be supposed, however, that there is any- 
thing like pedantry in his conversation. He is as far 
as possible removed from the conventional conception 
of a philosopher, who is supposed to be so wedded 
to abstract meditation as to be in social life the 
embodiment of dreary dulness. There is nothing of 
the dry-as-dust about Mr. Spencer. I remember how 



58 HERBERT SPENCER 

agreeably surprised I was with my first meeting with 
the great man. I had expected to meet a grave and 
somewhat awe-inspiring philosopher, whose mind 
was so absorbed in study of the Cosmos as to make 
him impatient of the trivialities of ordinary mortals. 
Instead, I found myself in presence of a bright, 
vivacious personality, a man of generous impulses, 
very much at home among the actualities of life, 
and withal brimful of humor. There is no assump- 
tion of superiority in Mr. Spencer's conversation. 
It is racy, pointed, vigorous. His criticisms of 
contemporary writers are calm, suggestive, and 
penetrative ; and, great as is his fame, he never 
poses as an oracle, or, in Carlylean style, assumes 
pontifical airs. How far he is removed from every- 
thing like this is well illustrated by an incident 
which occurred at a London dinner-party. The 
hostess had invited a friend specially to meet Mr. 
Spencer. The guest found himself seated beside an 
elderly gentleman, to whom he addressed the usual 
commonplaces. During the evening he was aston- 
ished to hear the elderly gentleman addressed across 
the table as Mr. Spencer. In surprise he turned to 
him and exclaimed, " Are you really Mr. Herbert 
Spencer ? " Mr. Spencer, smiling blandly, and no 
doubt with a merry twinkle in his eye, quietly 
replied that he was. Until considerations of health 
forbade him, Mr. Spencer delighted in the social side 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 59 

of life. Daily he used to visit the Athenseum Club, 
not to study, but to enjoy a game of billiards, of 
which he was passionately fond. There he would be 
found with his coat off, as intent upon scoring a 
victory against his opponent as he is in wrestling 
with a controversialist in the philosophic arena. 

But after all, the interest in Mr. Spencer's life is 
of an intellectual kind. As Emerson says : " Great 
geniuses have the shortest biographies. They live 
in their writings." Specially does this hold of Mr. 
Spencer, whose seclusion, apart from indifferent 
health, was necessitated by the formidable philo- 
sophic scheme which he had mapped out for him- 
self. In 1860, when forty years of age, he published 
the prospectus of a colossal scheme, namely, a new 
theory of the Cosmos, from its earliest nebular mani- 
festations to its highest development in man and 
civilization — a scheme bold in theoretic conception, 
and, considering Mr. Spencer's state of health, seem- 
ingly Quixotic in practical design. From this time 
onward the history of his life is mainly the history of 
a series of heroic endeavors, culminating in heroic 
achievement. How heroic were these endeavors 
will be made clear when the whole circumstances are 
fully considered. In addition to indifferent health — 
the result of a nervous breakdown consequent on 
over-work — Mr. Spencer had to face the fact that 
he had dedicated his life to an ideal in the realization 



60 HERBERT SPENCER 

of which both adequate remuneration and fame must 
at best have been remote results. In an age when the 
main springs of human activity are largely conven- 
tional, when great deeds are done from desire of im- 
mediate tangible reward, Mr. Spencer set the bright 
example of a career wholly devoted to universal ends, 
unblemished by that infirmity of noble minds — thirst 
for popular applause. With a determination positively 
heroic, an energy positively superhuman, the quiet, 
self-centred thinker set himself to wrestle with the 
great mysteries of Existence, undeterred by the chilly 
dreariness of the study, and untempted by the glit- 
tering allurements of the market-place. In his 
evidence given before the Copyright Commission, 
Mr. Spencer affords the reader a glimpse of the hard, 
stiff, lonely battle that had to be fought, uncheered 
by sympathy, and unrelieved by public approval. 
The autobiographic portion of his evidence runs as 
follows : " I published my first work. Social Statics^ 
at the end of 1850. Being a philosophical work, it 
was not possible to obtain a publisher who would 
undertake any responsibility, and I published it at 
my own cost. The edition consisted of 750 copies, 
and took fourteen years to sell. In 1855 I published 
the Principles of Psychology. There were 750 cop- 
ies. I gave away a considerable number of copies, 
and the remainder — I suppose about 650 — sold in 
twelve and a half years. I afterwards, in 1857, pub- 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 61 

lishecl a series of Essays, and, warned by previous 
results, I printed only 500 copies. That took ten 
and a half years to sell. Towards 1860 I began to 
publish a System of Philosophy. I decided upon the 
plan of issuing to subscribers in quarterly parts, and 
to the public in volumes when completed. Before 
the initial volume, First Principles, was published, I 
found myself still losing. During the issue of the 
second volume. Principles of Biology, I was still 
losing. In the middle of the third volume I was 
still losing so much that I found I was frittering 
away all that I possessed. I found that in the course 
of fifteen years I had lost nearly XI 200, adding 
interest, more than X1200, and as I was evidently 
going on ruining myself, I issued to the subscribers 
a notice of cessation. . . . After the issue of the 
notice, property came to me in time to prevent the 
cessation. My losses did not continue very long 
after that. The tide turned, and my books began 
to pay. They were repaid in 1874 — that is to say, 
in twenty-four years after I began I retrieved my 
position." In addition he spent nearly X3000 in 
Sociological Tables. 

That is to say, in the cause of truth Mr. Spencer 
for twenty-four years worked without fee or reward. 
His solitary intellectual labors were utterly ignored 
by the public, and in spite of that he laboriously and 
heroically toiled up the steep ascent of philosophy. 



62 HERBERT SPENCER 

In all this there is a grandeur quite Miltonic. In 
the midst of the general neglect Mr. Spencer had the 
sympathy of a number of philosophic thinkers, who 
knew his real worth. A number of American admir- 
ers, hearing of his determination to stop the series, 
forwarded to Mr. Spencer through Mr. Youmans, 
his devoted adherent and friend, a purse of money 
and a gold watch. The money, with characteristic 
high-mindedness, he accepted as a public trust for 
public ends. John Stuart Mill, I am informed, also 
stepped into the breach. He recognized in Mr. 
Spencer a new thinker of unique caliber, and with 
magnanimity far removed from personal rivalry, he 
offered Mr. Spencer a large sum to enable him to 
carry out his great undertaking. Mr. Spencer de- 
clined the offer, while fully appreciating the spirit 
in which it was made. 

The financial difficulty solved, Mr. Spencer had 
another difficulty to face, which proved to be a life- 
long one — namely, chronic ill-health. In spite of 
all obstacles, he has the satisfaction of knowing that 
the work mapped out forty years ago has been 
accomplished. In dignified strain he thus records 
his impressions in the concluding volume of his great 
undertaking : " On looking back on the six-and- 
thirty years which have passed since the Synthetic 
Philosophy was commenced, I am surprised at my 
audacity in undertaking it, and still more surprised 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 63 

at its completion. In 1860 my small resources had 
been nearly all frittered away in writing and publish- 
ing books which did not repay their expenses ; and I 
was suffering under a chronic disorder, caused by 
over-tax of the brain, which, wholly disabling me for 
eighteen months, thereafter limited my work to three 
hours a day, and usually to less. How insane my 
project must have seemed to onlookers may be judged 
from the fact that before the first chapter of the first 
volume was finished, one of my nervous breakdowns 
obliged me to desist. But imprudent courses do not 
always fail. Sometimes a forlorn hope is justified by 
the event. Though, along with other deterrents, 
many relapses, now lasting for weeks, now for months, 
and once for years, often made me despair of reaching 
the end, yet at length the end is reached. Doubtless 
in earlier days some exultation would have resulted, 
but as age creeps on feelings weaken, and now my 
chief pleasure is my emancipation. Still there is 
satisfaction in the consciousness that losses, discour- 
agements, and shattered health have not prevented 
me from fulfilling the purpose of my life." 

Though Mr. Spencer had finished his life-task, 
though in the process age had crept upon him and 
his physical energies had become weaker, yet were 
his philosophic powers unimpaired, his mental vision 
undimmed, and his intellectual strength unabated. 
Finding London life distracting, he retired to 



64 HERBERT SPENCER 

Brighton, wliere, in comparative solitude, he was 
enabled, as far as considerations of health would 
admit, to round off his great work by bringing it 
abreast of modern thought. His First Principles, 
containing the groundwork of the system, needed 
little or no attention ; but in Biology great strides 
had been made since his Principles were published, 
and Mr. Spencer set himself to publish a new and 
revised edition. The Principles of Psychology, too, 
stood in need of revision. The book had borne the 
brunt of recent attacks from the new Hegelian 
school which had sprung up in Oxford and Glas- 
gow. These attacks had to be met, and in this 
and kindred tasks Mr. Spencer found his leisure at 
Brighton amply occupied. Along with the feeling 
of satisfaction at the completion of his task was 
the feeling of gratification at the steady advance of 
his fame and influence. In America, where Mr. 
Spencer first received recognition, his influence has 
been deep and far-reaching. Even to a greater 
extent than in England his works have moulded 
the religious and philosophic thought of the New 
World. On the Continent his books have been 
translated by enthusiastic disciples, and among 
Oriental thinkers, in India and Japan, the bold and 
massive generalizations of the Spencerian philosophy 
have found a congenial home. Following in the 
footsteps of philosophic fame have come offers of 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 65 

worldly honor, which Mr. Spencer has steadily 
refused. To a thinker whose triumphs have been 
won, not in the stifling atmosphere of personal 
ambitions, but in the ample region of pure intel- 
lectual discovery, the conventional honors of the 
world seem pale and shadowy. So far as conven- 
tional distinctions are concerned, Mr. Spencer pre- 
fers to end life as he began — a devoted, austere 
worshipper of truth, removed alike from the distrac- 
tions of the market-place and the allurements of 
social distinction. 



CHAPTER V 

THE COSMOS UNVEILED 

A COMMON charge against Mr. Spencer is tliat he is 
a Materialist. Again and again he has repudiated 
the term, but explanation and denial do little to 
stem the current of misrepresentation. The root 
error made by those who accuse the Spencerian 
philosophy" of being materialistic is due to failure 
to distinguish between a comprehensive generaliza- 
tion of the Universe resting upon the data of science, 
and a philosophic interpretation of that generaliza- 
tion. Now, there are two ways in which the Uni- 
verse may be viewed, as natural and supernatural, 
mechanical, or rather dynamical, and spiritual. The 
supernatural or spiritual view has been condemned 
by history as sterile in the region of fact, and fan- 
tastic, not to say superstitious, in the region of in- 
terpretation. Progress in the acquiring of exact 
knowledge dates from the time when the mechanical 
view of the world was substituted for the spiritual. 
When Newton substituted his conception of gravita- 
tion for the angelic theory of planetary movements, 
he introduced into the study of the world a mechan- 

66 



THE COSMOS UNVEILED 67 

ical element verifiable in terms of force. Did this 
constitute Newton a Materialist ? When Darwin 
substituted for the spiritual theory of special crea- 
tions the dynamical conception of a struggle between 
organisms for a definite amount of life-sustaining 
forces, was he necessarily a Materialist ? Now, what 
Spencer has done is simply to fuse the separate gen- 
eralizations of science into one all-embracing gen- 
eralization. His life-work has been to trace the 
evolutionary process from star to soul, always, 
observe, scientifically interpretable in terms of force. 
Every man of science must be a Materialist when 
dealing with tangible modes of existence and their 
verifiable laws. The charge of Materialism would 
be valid if Mr. Spencer contended that for the ulti- 
mate explanation of the Universe all that was 
needed was the mechanical forces with which men 
of science deal. Now, Mr. Spencer repudiates as 
earnestly as his detractors the view that force, — 
which on the mechanical side is the final word of the 
scientific conception of the world, — is the final word 
of the philosophic conception. To the philosophical 
scientist force is but a symbol: in his view atoms 
and energies have only a relative value. Indeed, so 
impressed is Mr. Spencer with the inadequacy of 
the Materialist theory that in his First Principles 
and his Psychology, he says that it is more rational 
to conceive the ultimate principle of Existence in 



68 HERBERT SPENCER 

terms of Mind tlian Matter. But what the actual 
nature of the one reality is Mr« Spencer does not 
undertake to say. Once for all let it be understood 
that Spencerism stands on its own merits as the 
philosophy of the Knowable, and as the only organ- 
ized body of thought which has its roots in experi- 
ence and is a guide to the understanding of life, 
both theoretically and practically. Those who 
choose to identify Spencerism with Materialism are 
simply blinding themselves with a dust- cloud of 
their own raising. 

It tends, greatly to clear the ground for the 
comprehension of the Spencerian philosophy if we 
remember that it cuts itself off entirely from the 
old metaphysical attempts to solve the absolute mys- 
tery of existence. In his First Principles Spencer 
adopts and improves the Hamiltonian demonstra- 
tion of the relativity of knowledge, holding that, 
from the constitution of the human mind, knowl- 
edge of noumena is impossible. From this it 
follows that Spencer restricts philosophy to the 
unification of Knowledge, the reduction of phe- 
nomena to one ultimate law. If the Universe is 
not a chaos the laws which underlie phenomena 
must be related, and when traced back must merge 
into one another as the branches of a tree merge in 
the trunk and the trunk in the root. Mr. Spencer's 
task was to find the root-principle of phenomenal 



THE COSMOS UNVEILED 69 

existence. Some one has said that to " a thinker 
capable of comprehending it from a single point 
of view, the Universe would present but a single 
fact, but one all-comprehensive truth." Everything 
depends upon the point of view. From the point 
of view of the supernaturalist the Universe need 
not necessarily seem a single fact, one all-compre- 
hensive truth. The unifying principle may well 
be not in the Universe, but in the mind of the 
Creator. So far indeed from the Universe testify- 
ing to its own unity, or being the manifestation of 
one all-comprehensive truth, supernaturalists have 
always postulated the necessity of a revelation as 
interpreter of the Universe. Then again, if we 
take a mechanical view of the Universe, we do 
not readily arrive at the idea of unity. Between 
the various parts of a machine there may be no 
necessary, inevitable connection. For unity we 
must go to the mind of the constructor of the 
machine. So long as the purely mechanical con- 
ception of the Universe obtained sway over the 
minds of philosophers there was no getting beyond 
Positivism, with its theory that nothing can be 
known beyond co-existences and sequences. Mill's 
intellectual helplessness before the problem, his 
belief that there was no inherent necessity at the 
heart of things — instance his declaration that in 
other worlds two and two mioht make five — had 



70 HERBERT SPENCER 

their origin in the unconscious hold which the old 
mechanical conception of the Universe had upon 
his mind. 

The demonstration of the essential and necessary- 
unity of the Cosmos was only made possible when 
the dynamical was substituted for the mechanical 
point of view. The dynamical point of view in- 
volved the idea of growth, as against manufacture. 
When the Universe began to be viewed as a 
dynamic process rather than as a manufactured 
product, the way was opened for treating phe- 
nomena as something more than co-existences and 
sequences — as necessary links in a great cosmical 
chain. Manifestly we must get a clear grasp of the 
dynamic conception of the Universe before we can 
understand the law of its evolution. Meanwhile 
from a purely scientific standpoint all that is neces- 
sary is recognition of the fact that the two great 
generalizations known as the Nebular Theory and 
the Conservation of Force have made the dynamic 
theory of Matter the necessary basis of a study 
of the Cosmos. The scientific philosopher who 
deals with phenomena with a view to their unifi- 
cation must necessarily start with Existence when 
it comes before him in concrete, material fashion. 
Now, in tracing the Universe, science can get 
no further back than the nebula, or world-stuff. 
According to the nebular theory the matter which 



THE COSMOS UNVEILED 71 

composes the solar system once existed in a dif- 
fused state. The problem is to discover the laws 
by which, from a diffused nebulous state, Matter 
has increased in concentration and complexity so 
as to result in the world we now see. Along with 
the Nebular theory goes the doctrine of the Con- 
servation of Force, which, interpreted, means that 
the Matter of the Universe is a fixed quantity, 
and is capable of endless transformations. Viewed 
thus, the Universe is one fact, the result of one 
great cosmic process — namely, the Redistribution 
of Matter and Motion. When Spencer came upon 
the scene, he found the path of discovery cleared 
by the three great generalizations — the universal 
law of Gravitation, the Nebular Theory, and the 
doctrine of the Conservation or Persistence of 
Force. These three isolated generalizations Spencer 
fused into one by his theory of Evolution. Newton 
formulated the law of Gravitation, Kant and Laplace 
used it to explain the origin of stellar and planetary 
systems, and Spencer, combining this with the doc- 
trine of the Persistence of Force, was led to dis- 
cover the law of the entire cosmical process from 
star to soul. As has been well said, "the idea 
embraced in the word Evolution as employed by 
Spencer is by far the nearest approach ever yet 
made to the conception of an absolutely universal 
and cosmical law." 



72 HERBERT SPENCER 

The problem before Mr. Spencer was this : Given 
a Universe composed of a fixed quantity of Matter 
and Motion, conceived in harmony with the New- 
tonian law of Gravitation as manifesting co-existent 
forces of attraction and repulsion, to trace the pro- 
cess by which the Cosmos evolved from its nebulous 
to its present state. Spencer's starting-point is the 
Persistence of Force, on the ground that, reduced 
to its ultimate analysis, our conception of Matter 
rests upon "forces standing in certain correlations." 
When we say that Force is persistent, we are simply 
declaring that the Force in the Universe is constant 
— is never increased or diminished. This belief 
rests upon something deeper than a scientific induc- 
tion : it is a psychological necessity. If Force came 
into existence and went out of existence, the Uni- 
verse would be, not a Cosmos, but a Chaos. If 
Force was liable to sudden creation and annihilation, 
reasoning would be impossible, because reasoning 
is simply the classification of the relations among 
Forces. Scientific induction as well as abstract 
reasoning could not exist unless the forces of Nature 
persisted — that is, continued to exist. The great 
universal fact of the Redistribution of Matter and 
Motion is no arbitrary fact, but follows naturally 
from the Persistence of Force. It needs little reflec- 
tion to see that, if Force is persistent, the relations 
among forces must also persist : the one is a corol- 



THE COSMOS UNVEILED 73 

lary of the other. In the one as in the other, sci- 
entific induction and psychological necessity are in 
entire harmony. When we say that the relations 
among forces persist, we are simply postulating the 
law of Nature's uniformity, which is the essential 
basis of all scientific procedure. As Mill puts it, 
the uniformity of the laws of Natui-e is the major 
premise of all inductions. This belief has a deeper 
root than is indicated in the old Experiential and 
Positive philosophies. Hume, Mill, and Comte 
traced our conception of Nature's uniformity to 
Experience. Hume got no further than custom, 
and Mill never could reach anything better in the 
way of certainty. Comte's whole philosophy, rest- 
ing as it does on the idea of recording co-existences 
and sequences, entirely ignored the element of neces- 
sity in our conception of Nature's uniformity. Ac- 
cording to Spencer, the belief in the uniformity of 
Nature is something more than the outcome of expe- 
rience : it is a necessity of thought, which uncon- 
sciously we bring with us to the interpreting of 
experience, and without which experience itself 
could not be understood so as to be made the 
foundation of scientific certainty. Moreover, the 
Spencerian conception of Force and its relations 
throws a flood of light upon the idea of Cause and 
its teleological implication. Reduced to its ulti- 
mate analysis, " our belief in the necessity and uni- 



74 HERBERT SPENCER 

versality of causation is the belief that every 
manifestation of force must be preceded and suc- 
ceeded by some equivalent manifestation." That 
is to say, between cause and effect a natural and 
necessary relation exists. How far-reaching is the 
law of the persistence of relations among forces 
may be gathered from a remark made by Stallo in 
his suggestive book, Concepts of Modern Physics, 
where, without reference to Mr. Spencer at all, he 
says : " The real existence of things is co-extensive 
with their qualitative and quantitative determina- 
tions. And both are in their nature relations, 
quality resulting from mutual action, and quantity 
being simply a ratio between terms neither of which 
is absolute. ... It may be observed in this con- 
nection that not only the law of causality, the conser- 
vation of energy, and the indestructibility of matter 
so called, have their root in the relativity of all 
objective reality — being indeed simply different 
aspects of this relativity — but that Newton's first 
and third laws of motion, as well as all laws of 
least action in mechanics (including Gauss's laws 
of movement under least constraint), are but corol- 
laries from the same principle. And the fact that 
everything is, in its manifest existence, but a group 
of relations and reactions, at once accounts for 
Nature's inherent teleology." From this point of 
view, the laws of Nature are not externally imposed 



THE COSMOS UNVEILED 75 

upon Matter, but are necessarily evolved along with 
the evolution of phenomena — are, in fact, from 
the scientific standpoint, generalized descriptions of 
Nature's actions and reactions. 

Another corollary that flows from the Persistence 
of Force is the transformation and equivalence of 
forces. If the force in the Universe is a definite 
fixed quantity, it is evident that forces do not cease 
to exist when they elude the senses. Changed in 
form, force must reappear. This corollary from the 
Persistence of Force has had abundant illustration 
by science. Thanks to the labors of Meyer, Joule, 
Grove, and Helmholtz, science is now able to formu- 
late, as a fundamental law of Nature, the transfor- 
mation and equivalence of forces. Helmholtz has 
described the process with such lucidity that his 
words may fitly be quoted : " If a certain quantity 
of mechanical work is lost, there is obtained, as 
experiments made with the object of determining 
the point show, an equivalent quantity of heat, or 
instead of this, of chemical force ; and, conversely, 
when heat is lost, we gain an equivalent quantity 
of chemical or mechanical force ; and again, 
when chemical force disappears, an equivalent of 
heat or work ; so that in all these interchanges 
between various inorganic natural forces, working 
force may indeed disappear in one form, but then it 
reappears in exactly equivalent quantity in some 



76 HERBERT SPENCER 

other form : it is thus neither increased nor dimin- 
ished, but remains in exactly the same quantity." 
The attempt to extend the law of the transformation 
and equivalence of forces to organic processes met 
with stubborn resistance. It was feared that the 
reduction of the organic processes, with the mys- 
teries of life and growth, to the play of mechanical 
forces would lead straight to Materialism ; conse- 
quently for a time an entity called vital force was 
invoked in order to combat the coming danger. In 
his First Principles^ Spencer in his usual lucid and 
convincing manner shows that through all Nature's 
processes, organic and super-organic as well as inor- 
ganic, the law of the transformation and equiva- 
lence of forces holds good. 

Two other corollaries from the Persistence of 
Force refer to the direction of Motion and the 
rhythm of Motion. Motion, as Spencer shows by 
numerous and striking illustrations drawn from all 
parts of Nature, always follows the line of least 
resistance. Whether he is dealing with the move- 
ments of the planets, the forces which go to explain 
the condensation and evaporation of clouds, the 
nutritive and mechanical processes of organic 
nature, or the economic forces of society, Spencer 
is able to verify the great all-comprehensive truth 
that Motion follows the line of least resistance. It 
is the same with the truth that Motion is rhyth- 



THE COSMOS UNVEILED 77 

mical. Mr. Spencer's treatment of tliis section is 
specially profound. It is difficult to know which to 
admire most — the clearness of his analysis of the 
complex phenomena with which he deals, or the 
brilliancy of his power of generalization. So 
impressed have some of his contemporaries been 
with the marvellous power exhibited in this section 
that one of them, a writer of great repute, has 
declared that Mr. Spencer's treatment of the 
rhythm of Motion " offers one of the most brilliant 
examples of strict philosophic thinking which the 
world has yet produced." Like the other corollaries, 
direction of Motion and the rhythm of Motion are 
shown to be necessary deductions from the Per- 
sistence of Force. In regard to the former Mr. 
Spencer says : " When we seek a warrant for the 
assumption that of two conflicting forces that is the 
greater which produces motion in its own direction, 
we find no other than the consciousness that such 
part of the greater force as is unneutralized by the 
lesser must produce its effect — the consciousness 
that the residuary force cannot disappear, but must 
manifest itself in some equivalent change — the con- 
sciousness that force is persistent." In regard to 
rhythm Mr. Spencer also shows that the inductive 
truth that all motion is rhythmical rests on the deduc- 
tive fact that all motion must necessarily be rhythmi- 
cal : "The force embodied as a momentum in a given 



78 HERBERT SPENCER 

direction cannot be destroyed ; and if it eventually 
disappears, it reappears in the reaction of the retard- 
ing body, which begins afresh to draw the now 
arrested mass back from its aphelion. . . . Thus, 
then, rhythm is a necessary characteristic of all 
motion. Given the co-existence everywhere of 
antagonistic forces — a postulate which, as we have 
seen, is necessitated by the form of our experience 
— and rhythm is an inevitable corollary from the 
persistence of force." Obviously, we have only got 
part of the way to the construction of a philosophy 
in showing that all phenomena rest upon one law — 
the Persistence of Force and its corollaries. This is 
only to show the unity of phenomena, but how are 
we to explain the difference ? It is essential to 
trace the One in the Many ; it is equally essential 
to trace the rise and progress of the Many. Mr. 
Spencer had now to show how the Universe as a 
cosmical product resulted from these laws — in other 
words he had to formulate the process by which 
phenomena assume their varied forms in obedience 
to the law of the Persistence of Force. What was 
wanted was a formula which would cover the 
process manifested by phenomena in all their mutual 
actions and inter-actions, from the earliest nebulous 
existence to the highest products of civilization. 
The law of that process discovered by Mr. Spencer 
he calls the law of Evolution. At the end of a 



THE COSMOS UNVEILED 79 

long inquiry, Avorked out brilliantly by means of the 
inductive method, Mr. Spencer reaches the law of 
the great cosmic process. The redistribution of 
Matter and Motion which results in the formation 
of an aggregate, Mr. Spencer calls by the name of 
Evolution ; the redistribution which results in the 
decay and dissipation of an aggregate he terms 
Dissolution. Evolution is defined as an integration 
of Matter and concomitant dissipation of Motion, 
during which the Matter passes from an indefinite 
incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent het- 
erogeneity, and during which the retained Motion 
goes through a parallel transformation. This law 
holds true of all existences whatsoever. For con- 
venience we divide phenomena into sections — astro- 
nomic, geologic, biologic, psychologic, sociologic ; but 
the process of Evolution is one and its law is one. 
Evolution of the parts goes on along with evolution 
of the whole. Not only is Evolution one in prin- 
ciple, but one in fact. 

We are still, however, in the region of induction. 
John Stuart Mill would remind us that no number 
of inductions can establish a necessary law. For 
anything induction can tell us, there may not be any 
necessary connection between facts. They may be 
found within our experience existing in a regular 
order, but as to the necessity of that order induction 
is silent. Unless, therefore, Mr. Spencer's attempt 



80 HERBERT SPENCER 

at a great cosmic philosophy was to prove abor- 
tive, it was essential that he should not only show 
how the cosmic process takes place, but also why it 
takes place in one form and could not possibly take 
place in another. In other words, he had to deduce 
the great world-transformations from the Persistence 
of Force. Induction and Deduction had, so to 
speak, to join hands before Knowledge was unified 
and philosophy had reached its goal. Taking his 
stand upon the great cosmical fact of which all other 
facts are merely phases — namely, the redistribution 
of Matter and Motion, as shown to follow necessarily 
from the transformation and equivalence of force, 
along the line of least resistance, and in rhythmical 
direction — Spencer had to show that the process 
which results in the formation of aggregates neces- 
sarily means a process of evolution from a state of 
indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a state of defi- 
nite coherent heterogeneity. It is now a fact gen- 
erally accepted by men of science that the planetary 
system at its origin was an immense nebulous mass 
at the stage of comparative homogeneity — a stage 
which, however, was necessarily being departed from 
by the attractive force of matter. Motion towards 
local centres of gravity would set up heterogeneities 
in the masses, which, being subject to unlike forces, 
would be rapidly differentiated. In the course of 
the redistribution of Matter and Motion the homo- 



THE COSMOS UNVEILED 81 

geneous nebulous fluid, under the operation of strictly 
mechanical principles, was bound to become hetero- 
geneous. The same process is traceable in the solar 
system, in the geologic and organic history of the 
earth, and in civilization. Not only the Universe, 
but all things in it, have advanced from the homo- 
geneous to the heterogeneous state. The instability 
of the homogeneous is greatly increased by another 
principle, which acts with all the force of mechanical 
necessity — namely, the multiplication of effects : 
one cause produces many effects. To this is due 
the diversity which we find in Nature. 

So far we have traced the passage of the homo- 
geneous to the heterogeneous, from the simple to 
the complex, as being the result of sheer mechanical 
necessity, but no reason has been given why the het- 
erogeneity should proceed in an orderly definite man- 
ner. If there were only instability of the homogeneous 
and multiplicity of effects, the Universe might well be 
a chaos. To what is the orderliness of Nature due ? 
Still adhering to the principle of mechanical neces- 
sity, Mr. Spencer shows that like forces produce 
like results, unlike forces unlike results, and thus 
along with the passage of aggregates from the uni- 
form to the multiform there also proceeds a change 
from indefiniteness to definiteness of parts. As has 
been well said : " Segregation, or the clustering of 
the like and separation of the unlike parts under the 



82 HERBERT SPENCER 

action of forces capable of moving them, produces 
the definiteness and individuality of things." Under 
the influence of mechanical law the process of the 
redistribution of Matter and Motion, being the result 
of antagonistic forces, must reach a point where the 
forces balance, producing upon us the feeling of 
harmony or equilibrium in Nature. In its com- 
pleteness the law of Evolution is presented in- 
ductively and verified deductively from the law of 
the Persistence of Force, which moves along the 
line of least resistance in a rhythmical direction, 
producing integration by loss of motion and orderly 
differentiation, owing to the instability of the homo- 
geneous, the multiplicity of effects, and segregation, 
resulting in a balance of forces, called equilibration. 
When the balance is overthrown by an increase ot 
Motion, then disintegration begins, followed by 
incoherent indefinite heterogeneity, ending in Dis- 
solution. 

By tracing Nature's processes to their cosmical 
root Mr. Spencer has unified phenomena, and in 
the act has, of course, unified Knowledge. In 
his view the Universe is a complex unity which, 
when reduced to its ultimate analysis, is seen to be 
one fact — the Redistribution of Matter and Motion, 
all phenomena being complex aspects of that one 
fact. The object of Mr. Spencer's numerous works 
is to trace the law of evolution through the various 



THE COSMOS UNVEILED 83 

branches of phenomena, organic, super-organic, 
psychologic, and sociologic, and by means of it to 
unify and interpret phenomena. Mr. Spencer makes. 
no attempt to give an absolute explanation of the 
Universe. His aim has been to show in what man- 
ner the earth with all its life has been evolved, 
to trace the cosmical process, to unify phenomenal 
knowledge, not to dispel mystery or answer ques- 
tions of the Absolute and Infinite. In his First 
Principles Mr. Spencer has applied his formula to 
the evolution of the earth from its nebulous to its 
present stage ; but to bring his scheme of philosophy 
within reasonable compass, he has merely outlined 
the inorganic evolution, reserving his strength for 
the development of life to which the Principles of 
Biology are devoted. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 

Whatever be the ultimate philosophic value of 
Comte's famous law of the three stages, to the 
student of scientific thought it is of great utility. 
He learns the close connection that exists between 
metaphysical conceptions and scientific discoveries. 
If discovery has been slow, the reason is due perhaps 
more to a wrong method of metaphysical interpreta- 
tion than to actual scientific exploration. Facts 
have lain around the man of science in abundance, 
but he has remained blind to their significance, 
simply because his mind was filled with conceptions 
which belong to the metaphysical stage of thought. 
At the metaphysical stage, the mind in its search 
for causes finds a resting-place in entities or abstrac- 
tions. Instead of being content with a formula 
which describes all phases of phenomena — a kind 
of intellectual shorthand — the mind personifies the 
process, and converts the final result into an initial, 
dominating, all-controlling agent. 

In all regions of phenomena the belief in entities 
84 



THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 85 

has retarded the progress of knowledge. Light, 
heat, electricity, magnetism — each in turn has been 
conceived not as the result of certain conditions, 
but as a mysterious principle controlling the con- 
ditions. A good example of this is associated with 
Stahl's doctrine of phlogiston, which he used to 
explain the theory of combustion. Stahl supposed 
that all combustible substances contained a common 
element, which he called the Fire Principle. The 
discovery of the doctrine of the Conservation and 
Transformation of Forces brought to an end, in the 
realm of physics and chemistry, the despotic sway 
of entities, of personified abstractions. But if they 
no longer govern, they reign in somewhat languid 
and ornamental fashion. No man of science takes 
entities into account when dealing with phj^sical 
and chemical phenomena, but in common speech 
their influence may still be traced. In the popular 
mind Gravitation, for instance, is thought of as the 
cause of bodies tending to approach one another, 
instead of being simply the name of an observed 
fact. Chemical affinity, too, is thought of as the 
cause of the combination of gases, whereas, like 
Gravitation, it is the generalized description of a 
natural process. 

In one realm, that of Biology, entities not only 
reign, but govern. So despotically do metaphysical 
abstractions rule in Biology that they have been 



86 HERBERT SPENCER 

the most formidable opponent to the application of 
the Evolution theory to life and its multiform 
manifestations. Just as formerly men of science 
spoke of a Heat Principle and a Fire Principle, so 
now they speak of a Vital Principle. It may be 
surmised that as metaphysical conceptions have 
been driven out of the purely mechanical and 
chemical spheres, they must ultimately be banished 
from the higher and more complex world of organic 
life. The surmise is transformed into a confident 
expectation when it is discovered that the meta- 
physical view of phenomena is the result of a natural 
infirmity of thought, which can only be cured by a 
rigorous application of scientific and philosophic 
analysis. That infirmity of thought is well expressed 
by James Hinton when he remarks upon the fact 
" that the processes of Nature are studied by us in 
an inverse order : we see effects before we see 
causes." He illustrates this as follows: "Let us 
conceive that, instead of having invented steam- 
engines, men had met with them in nature as 
objects for their investigation. What would have 
been the most obvious character of these bodies? 
Clearly their power of acting — of moving. This 
would have become familiar as a ' Property ' or 
endowment of steam-engines long before the part 
played by the steam had been recognized ; for that 
would have required careful investigation and a 



THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 8T 

knowledge of some recondite laws, meclianical, 
chemical, pneumatic. Might it not then have 
happened that motion might have been taken as a 
peculiar characteristic belonging to the nature of 
the engine ? and when after a long time the expan- 
sion of the steam coincident with this motion was 
detected, might it not have been at first regarded 
as consequence and not as cause ? " Under these 
circumstances it would seem the most natural thing 
in the world to trace the complex activity of the 
steam-engine to a Locomotive Principle. 

How inadequate as an explanation of biological 
phenomena is the principle of Vital Force is admi- 
rably shown by Mr. Spencer in his remarkable 
chapter, "The Dynamic Element in Life," in the 
new edition of his Principles of Biology. Those 
who write down Mr. Spencer as a Materialist 
will find him in that chapter quite at one with the 
Idealist in admitting the mystery of Life, and the 
impossibility of conceiving it to stand in the rela- 
tion of effect to purely mechanical causes. It is a 
mistake, however, to suppose that there is some- 
thing specially inscrutable about life. The inscruta- 
bility is the same in kind as that which belongs to 
Existence as a whole. The fall of a stone is quite 
as inexplicable as the activity of an organism. It 
is just as impossible to conceive how a stone falls as 
how an organism moves. As Mr. Spencer observes, 



88 HERBERT SPENCER 

neither Newton nor any one else has been able to 
conceive how the molecules of matter in the stone 
are affected not only by the molecules of matter in 
the adjacent part of the Earth, but by those form- 
ing parts of its mass eight thousand miles off, which 
severally exercise their influence without impediment 
from intervening molecules ; and still less can we 
conceive how every molecule of matter in the sun 
ninety-two millions of miles off has a share in con- 
trolling the movements of the Earth. Still less can 
we conceive the physical process by which electric 
impulses are transmitted from one place to another. 
The ultimate reason of any phenomenon is unknown; 
the fact we know, and the law of the fact we can 
discover. For the evolutionist the one practical 
question in biology is not, Can the mystery of life 
be explained ? but. Can the processes of life be 
traced, and the complex phenomena reduced to 
something like unity ? In other words. Will the 
Spencerian formula of Evolution, as a movement 
from the simplex to the complex through successive 
integrations and differentiations, cover not only the 
purely mechanical side of Nature, but also those 
processes known as living? 

Anti-evolutionists deny the application of Mr. 
Spencer's formula to biology on the ground that 
between non-living and living matter there is a 
great gulf, which cannot be bridged by a theory 



THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 89 

that postulates tlie unity and continuity of all 
Nature's processes. In their view living matter is 
so unique that by no conceivable process could it be 
evolved from non-living matter : a special creative 
act is necessary, which at once invalidates the 
methods and results of the evolutionist. The 
assumption here is that there are two kinds of 
matter, living and dead. This assumption takes its 
rise in the old conception of matter as something 
dead, inert, which can only be energized in two 
ways, either by a specific creative fiat, or by the 
infusion of a mysterious vital principle. This crude 
idea of matter no longer holds sway over the minds 
of modern philosophers and scientific students. 
Science and philosophy, long divided by such watch- 
words as Materialism and Idealism, are now begin- 
ning to unite in recognition of the fact that Matter 
is not dead, inert, but alive and everywhere palpi- 
tating with energies, and that organic life is no 
special creation, but simply a highly specialized and 
complex form of the universal life of Nature. So 
far from Mr. Spencer being a Materialist, he might 
more correctly be described as an Idealist. So far 
from thinking that life is a product of Matter, he 
has clearly indicated that in his view Matter itself 
is a form of life. In his own words : " Under one 
of its aspects, scientific progress is a gradual trans- 
figuration of Nature. Where ordinary perception 



90 HERBERT SPENCER 

saw perfect simplicity it reveals great complexity; 
where there seems absolute inertness it discloses 
intense activity ; and in what appears mere vacancy 
it finds a marvellous play of forces. Each genera- 
tion of physicists discovers in so-called ' brute- 
matter' powers which but a few years before the 
most instructed physicists would have thought in- 
credible. When the explorer of nature sees that, 
quiescent as they appear, surrounding solid bodies 
are thus sensitive to forces which are infinitesimal in 
their amounts — when the spectroscope proves to 
him that molecules on the earth pulsate in harmony 
with molecules in the stars — when there is forced 
on him the inference that every point in space 
thrills with an infinity of vibrations passing through 
it in all directions ; the conception to which he 
tends is much less that of a universe of dead matter 
than that of a universe everywhere alive : alive, if 
not in the restricted sense, still in the general 
sense." At the end of all scientific and philosophic 
inquiries we come, according to Mr. Spencer, to an 
infinite and omnipresent Energy from which all 
things proceed. Manifestly this new conception 
of Life renders unreal the old dispute about non- 
living and living matter. Living matter we no 
longer think of as something entirely different in 
kind from non-living matter. We now think of the 
difference as one of degree. Matter is alive, not 



THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 91 

because there has been added to it a special 
property. What we call living matter only seems 
to us to be specially alive because its movements 
are of a highly complex nature, and because it is 
organized on what seems to us to be a principle of 
inherent self-activity. If the distinction we make 
between living and non-living matter be really an 
artificial distinction, the result of a natural infirmity 
of thought, clearly the philosopher who would trace 
the process of life must begin his work with the 
earliest manifestations of living matter. 

Naturally Mr. Spencer begins his Principles of 
Biology by a consideration of the constitution of 
organic matter. It is no part of the biologist's 
duty to discuss the speculative question of the 
origin of life. The mathematician does not con- 
cern himself with what Quantity, Space, and 
Time are ; nor the physicist with what Force is. 
In like manner the biologist has to deal with the 
manifestations of life, not with origins. As a 
philosophic biologist, Mr. Spencer has accomplished 
his task when he shows that the phenomena of 
life conform to the process of evolution which he 
has traced in the inorganic sphere. At the outset 
an apparently formidable obstacle meets us in the 
attempt to interpret organic evolution by means 
of the Spencerian formula. In its simplest form 
evolution may be described as an integration of 



92 HERBERT SPENCER 

matter and concomitant dissipation of motion. But 
when we come to study organic matter, we dis- 
cover the two processes no longer working in 
antagonism, but in unison. Unless motion can be 
conserved instead of being entirely dissipated, 
there cannot be secured those secondary phases 
of evolution known as functional activities. The 
problem is to secure at one and the same time 
structural fixity with functional mobility. How 
is motion to be retained in an organism without 
producing the natural consequence of disintegra- 
tion? In the case of organic bodies these ap- 
parently contradictory conditions are reconciled. 
In organic bodies matter is combined in a form 
which embodies an enormous amount of motion 
along with a great degree of concentration. Both 
in his First Principles and Principles of Biology 
Mr. Spencer subjects matter in its earliest or 
protoplasmic state to a rigorous analysis, the 
result of which is to show that the essential 
characteristic of living matter is the union of 
great molecular activity along with a degree of 
cohesion that permits of temporary fixity of arrange- 
ment. The phenomena of life, so far as the man 
of science is concerned, are inseparably associated, 
not with unique properties, but with modes of 
motion. Science has amply justified Mr. Spencer's 
reasonings. Thus we find Sir Michael Foster from 



THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 93 

the practical point of view unconsciously endorsing 
the Spencerian line of thought, as follows : " The 
more these molecular problems of physiology are 
studied the stronger becomes the conviction that 
the consideration of what we call structure and 
composition must, in harmony with the modern 
teachings of physics, be approached under the 
dominant conception of modes of motion. The 
physicists have been led to consider the qualities 
of things as expressions of internal movements ; 
even more imperative does it seem to us that the 
biologist should regard the qualities of protoplasm 
(including structure and composition) as in like 
manner the expressions of internal movements. 
He may speak of protoplasm as a complex sub- 
stance, but he must strive to realize that what he 
means by that is a complex whirl, an intricate 
dance, of which what he calls chemical composi- 
tion, histological structure, and gross configuration 
are, so to speak, the figures ; to him the renewal 
of protoplasm is but the continuance of the dance, 
its functions and actions the transference of the 
figures. ... It seems to us necessary, for a satis- 
factory study of the problems, to keep clearly before 
the mind the conception that the phenomena in 
question are the result, not of properties of kinds 
of matter, but of kinds of motion." Organic 
evolution begins with homogeneous living matter, 



94 HERBERT SPENCER 

with protoplasm in its most elementary form. 
Owing to its molecular instability matter changes 
in the direction of the heterogeneous, becomes 
differentiated. In other words, there results multi- 
plication of organs, with their respective functions. 
From the amceba, whose entire body may be said 
to consist of a single organ, its stomach, to the 
human being, the differentia is immense. Yet the 
process is not abrupt, but transitional : each stage is 
a link in the great evolutionary chain. Hand in 
hand go integration, differentiation, and segregation. 
Different parts of an organism become co-ordinated, 
the result being a moving equilibrated system, a 
coherent individuality. Manifestly if life is con- 
ceived as a mode of motion, as the resultant of com- 
plex molecular activities, it cannot be understood 
except in relation to its environment, the medium 
of these activities. So long as a Vital Principle 
was postulated, the inner activities of an organism 
received an undue importance, almost to the ex- 
clusion of the environing agencies. Mr. Spencer 
showed that life was no entity, but a relation. 
Vital phenomena are the product, not of an inherent 
principle of life, but of the organism and its medium, 
the, inner forces in vital correlation with the outer 
forces. According to his celebrated definition, Life 
is the continuous adjustment of internal to external 
relations. In his First Principles and Principles of 



THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 95 

Biology Mr. Spencer has shown that the evolution of 
organic life, from the humblest protoplasmic forms 
in which it is found to the highest types with all 
their structural and functional complexities, is from 
the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, by means of 
successive integrations and differentiations. 

It should not be forgotten that the evolution of 
organic life is simply a specialized form of cosmical 
evolution, consequently a close correspondence exists 
between organisms and their environment. Given 
an environment gradually increasing in heteroge- 
neity, and it follows that in order to survive and 
propagate themselves organisms must, in adapting 
themselves, also increase in heterogeneity. Parts 
of the organisms restrict themselves to certain 
processes, and thus by specialization a sort of divi- 
sion of labor takes place, the result of which is to 
create structural and functional complexities. This 
process, called direct equilibration, would be power- 
less without indirect equilibration, better known as 
Darwin's law of " Natural Selection " — a law which 
should not be confounded with the law of Evolution, 
it being at most a brilliant confirmation of Mr. 
Spencer's cosmical generalization. By means of the 
struggle for existence everywhere going on among 
organisms, there is secured the killing-out of the 
unfit, and the survival and perpetuation of those 
organisms characterized by successful variations, 



96 HERBERT SPENCER 

which by the law of heredity become structural and 
functional. Palaeontology confirms this by showing 
that each geological epoch had its own class of 
organisms in correspondence with the environment, 
thus proving that organic has gone hand-in-hand 
with inorganic evolution. Embryology adds further 
confirmation, by showing that the human organism 
in its evolution from the germ cell summarizes the 
ancestral development in being progress from an 
indefinite incoherent protoplasmic homogeneity to 
the definite coherent heterogeneity of the fully 
developed body through successive integrations and 
differentiations — all of which, as Mr. Spencer indi- 
cates, are necessitated by the law of the Persistence 
of Force, and its corollaries. 

Without transgressing at undue length upon the 
work of specialists, and making this summary of 
Mr. Spencer's views severely technical, it would be 
impossible to do justice to the elaborate and pains- 
taking manner in which the theory of Evolution is 
applied to the construction of what has been aptly 
called a working thought-model of organisms and 
species, in their development, racial history, and 
everyday activities. Mr. Spencer has done more 
than reconstruct Biology on new lines ; he has linked 
the science to human affairs by his bold and luminous 
generalization on the multiplication of the human 
race — a generalization which, on account of its 



THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 97 

bearing on the famous theory of Malthus, is of 
perhaps greater interest to the sociologist than to 
the biologist. Those who are acquainted with the 
social aspirations of the French Revolution thinkers 
do not need to be told of the enthusiastic hopes 
which were entertained of the human race from the 
Age of Reason, which it was believed had dawned 
upon humanity. According to the Encyclopaedists, 
with the destruction of the great enemies of progress. 
Priestcraft and Kingcraft, the reign of equality and 
brotherhood would be inaugurated. The specula- 
tions of Condorcet summed up the creed and the 
hopes of the eighteenth century reformers. Like 
the spectre at the banquet, Malthus appeared with 
his gloomy prophecies of the future. By his theory 
of population Malthus seemed to prove that human 
ills were untouched by political and social revolu- 
tion — were inherent in the nature of things. With 
great parade of statistics and imposing display of 
logic, the English parson contended that he had 
discovered a law against which the philosophic opti- 
mists would battle in vain, the law that human 
population increases at a quicker rate than human 
subsistence. Poverty and misery as a consequence 
inevitably followed at the heels of civilization. 
According to Malthus there was no cover set for 
the poor man at Nature's table. Godwin and his 
fellow-optimists strove hard to weaken the force of 



98 HERBERT SPENCER 

this pessimistic theory ; but coinciding as they did 
with the misery of the Revolution wars, the specu- 
lations of Malthus appeared to have an immovable 
root in actual experience. 

To Mr. Spencer was reserved the honor of formu- 
lating a biological theory which, while doing justice 
to the elements of truth in Malthusianism, pointed 
the way to a solution which removed the dark 
shadow of pessimism from civilization. As the re- 
sult of profound study of the phenomena of multi- 
plication, Mr. Spencer discovered that Individuation 
and Genesis are in necessary antagonism : advance 
of the one necessitates decrease of the other. The 
error of Malthus lay in the assumption that Gene- 
sis was an absolute instead of a relative factor of 
organic life. According to Mr. Spencer, Genesis 
varies with Individuation. The higher and more 
complex the organism, the lower the rate of increase. 
In an advancing state of civilization where nerve 
and brain development are the dominating factors, 
the rate of population necessarily declines. Mr. 
Spencer presents his theory in condensed form as 
follows : " The necessary antagonism of Individua- 
tion and Genesis not only fulfils the a 'priori law of 
maintenance of race, from the monad up to Man, but 
ensures final attainment of the highest form of this 
maintenance — a form in which the amount of life 
shall be the greatest possible and the births and 



THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 99 

deaths the fewest possible. From the beginning 
pressure of population has been the proximate cause 
of progress. It produced the original diffusion of 
the race. It compelled men to abandon predatory 
habits and take to agriculture. It led to the clear- 
ing of the earth's surface. It forced men into the 
social state ; made social organization inevitable ; and 
has developed the social sentiments. It has stimu- 
lated to progressive improvements in production, 
and to increased skill and intelligence. It is daily 
thrusting us into closer contact and more mutually 
dependent relationships. And after having caused, 
as it ultimately must, the due peopling of the globe, 
and the raising of its habitable parts into the 
highest state of culture — after having perfected all 
processes for the satisfaction of human wants — after 
having, at the same time, developed the intellect into 
competence for its work, and the feelings into fitness 
for social life — after having done all this, the press- 
ure of population must gradually approach to an 
end." And thus we find Mr. Spencer in Sociology 
acting the part of reconciler between the Optimists 
and the Pessimists, just as in Psychology he put an 
end to the feud between the Intuitionalists and the 
Experientialists. 

The Principles of Biology created a new era in 
the study of Nature. When it appeared, master 
minds were under the spell of metaphysical concep- 

tiTC. 



100 HERBERT SPENCER 

tions of life, and the real facts of organic develop- 
ment were obscured, on the one hand by the 
erroneous notion about the origin of life-forms, and 
on the other by the forbidding nomenclature of 
dry-as-dust specialists — men whose vision was so 
narrowed by pedantic devotion to details that they 
could not see the wood for trees. By his pierc- 
ing vision into the heart of Nature's process, and 
his marvellous co-ordinating faculty, Mr. Spencer 
brought order out of confusion, and by the touch of 
his philosophic magic wand revealed a new world of 
surpassing interest and beauty. Biological science 
has made great strides since his work appeared, but 
the strides have been mainly along the lines which 
were indicated half a century ago by the unique 
genius of the author of the Principles of Biology. 

That the progress of biological knowledge has 
been mainly on the lines laid down by Mr. Spencer 
is evident from the revised edition of the Principles 
of Biology published in 1898 and 1899. Since the 
publication of the work in 1864 men of science 
have accumulated facts in great abundance, but 
these, instead of conflicting with the conceptions 
of Mr. Spencer, harmonize with his philosophic 
ground-plan. Since 1864 biologists have busied 
themselves largely with the astonishing phenomena 
of "Metabolism," cell-life, and the questions of 
heredity as raised by Professor Weismann. In the 



THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 101 

new edition these problems are attacked with an 
acumen and vigor which abundantly show that 
at the age of four-score Mr. Spencer's intellectual 
vision has not become dim, nor his intellectual force 
abated. Notwithstanding this, there is a tendency 
in some quarters to question Mr. Spencer's method 
of dealing with the intricate and minute facts of 
organic life on philosophic principles — a method 
apt to be superficially confounded with the a priori 
speculations of the old Nature philosophers. Dis- 
tinguished men of science, however, bear ungrudg- 
ing testimony to the great practical value of Mr. 
Spencer's biological philosophy. In a letter dated 
1898, a portion of which Mr. Spencer kindly permits 
me to quote, Professor Lloyd Morgan says : " To 
none of my intellectual masters do I owe a deeper 
debt of gratitude than to you." And in a review 
of the revised edition Professor Morgan remarks : 
" What strikes one most forcibly on reading the 
Principles of Biology in this new and enlarged 
edition is the extraordinary range and grasp of its 
author, the piercing keenness of his eye for essen- 
tials, his fertility in invention, and the bold sweep 
of his logical method. In these days of increasingly 
straitened specialism it is well that we should feel 
the influence of a thinker whose powers of generali- 
zation have seldom been equalled, and perhaps never 
surpassed." In the same strain men of the stamp of 



102 HERBERT SPENCER 

Sir Joseph Hooker and Professor Ray Lankester 
have borne testimony to the great and enduring 
work which Mr. Spencer has done in the biological 
field. On the Continent Mr. Spencer's labors have 
met with hearty and generous appreciation. In the 
January number of the Revue Scientifique for 1899 
appeared the following : " The work of 1864 itself 
has unquestionably had a profound influence upon 
these improvements [in the domain of biology since 
1864] in suggesting new inquiries and aims. Biolo- 
gists cannot do without consulting the revised work 
— new on many points — of the ' English philoso- 
pher ; and doing so, they will find in it many 
precious ideas and suggestions from which their 
experimental work will benefit largely. And like 
us they will be full of admiration for this work, so 
all-compact and admirably arranged, so crammed 
with facts and ideas, of the philosopher who has 
exercised such a profound influence upon the science 
of his time." Professor Yves Delage, Professor of 
Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at the Sorbonne, 
in the preface to his work. The Structure of the 
Protoplasma and Theories on Heredity^ etc., says : 
" What I have called positive experiment is often 
as difficult to conceive as to accomplish, and if a 
philosopher counsels it, and a naturalist corroborates 
it as well, it may so happen that the former has 
not the least part in the success. The example of 



THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 103 

H. Spencer is proof of it. With him the philosopher 
is coupled with the naturalist, but, so to speak, with 
a non-practising naturalist. I do not know if he 
dissected animals or practised the ingenuities of 
technical histology. Who would dare deny, how- 
ever, that he has rendered important services to 
Biology? He possesses deep knowledge of bio- 
logical questions, and arguments drawn from anat- 
omy, histology, or embryogeny do not in any way 
embarrass him." 

In the same connection my friend Professor 
Arthur Thomson of Aberdeen, the distinguished 
Scottish Biologist, has favored me with the fol- 
lowing : " Mr. Spencer has a genius for seizing 
essentials and leaving out distracting details, for 
disposing facts in big groups, for disclosing what 
one might call rational relationships — and, in this 
respect, quite ajjart from the evolution theory, his 
Principles of Biology was an epoch-making work. 
I mean that even as a balance-sheet of the facts of 
life, the book is a biological classic ; consciously or 
unconsciously we are aU standing on his shoulders. 
Indeed, many of us have had the experience of re- 
discovering clear ways of relating facts which we 
presently find much better done in a brief paragraph 
in the Principles. But then the great work was 
much more than a careful balance-sheet of the facts 
of life — not that this was little, it was the introduc- 



104 HERBERT SPENCER 

tion of order, clearness, breadth of view, and gave 
biology a new start — it also displayed the facts of 
life and the inductions from these for the first time 
clearly in the light of evolution. I mean that if the 
evolution idea is an adequate modal formula, then we 
need to think of growth, development, differentiation, 
integration, reproduction, heredity, death — all the big 
facts — in the light of this. This was not Darwin's 
line, he was a great evolutionist, but surely not philo- 
sophic. Spencer's problems are not less real because 
more general, though many who talk of ' organism,' 
' growth,' ' differentiation,' etc., glibly, and without 
ever feeling the problems behind every word, would 
probably not admit this. I cannot say that I have 
any great sympathy with those who call Spencer 
an abstract biologist, a philosophical biologist, etc., 
and mean thereby to suggest that he is not in touch 
with, and is not treating of, the real facts of life. I 
should rather think that he got nearer the realities 
than any one else. But I suppose the false antithesis 
between philosophy and science will have a lingering 
death, since even Spencer's work has not killed it." 

When regard is had to the profound influence and 
epoch-making nature of the Principles of Biology., 
Mr. Spencer may be allowed, with pardonable pride, 
to express in the preface of his new edition a feeling 
of gladness at surviving long enough to present his 
work in a finished and modernized form. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 

In dealing with biological phenomena it was pointed 
out that one great source of error was the fact that 
the processes of Nature are necessarily studied in 
an inverse order. We see effects before we discover 
causes. Ignorant of the slow complex processes of 
Nature, the mind naturally seeks for causes suffi- 
ciently striking and dramatic to account for impos- 
ing effects. As already remarked, had we been 
ignorant of the mode of construction of a steam 
engine, we should naturally have attributed its 
power of motion to a "property," or, in other words, 
to a Locomotive Principle. In the absence of scien- 
tific knowledge man naturally falls back upon enti- 
ties as causes of phenomena. We have seen the 
part which entities have played in Biology. Even 
yet many scientific men, in dread of Materialism, 
cling to the Vital Principle as the chief and domi- 
nating cause of life and its multiform manifestations. 
When we come to the study of mind, we are not 
surprised to find that here, even more than in life 

105 



106 HERBERT SPENCER 

in general, entities have played an important part. 
The marvels of consciousness, the mysteries of brain 
and mind, are so overpowering that the first impulse 
of the student is to look for the cause altogether 
outside of ordinary cosmic forces. Primitive man 
could find no cause adequate to the effect short of 
supernatural power. In his view, God formed man 
of the dust of the earth, and breathed into him a 
living soul. As the theological conception faded 
away, its place was taken by the metaphysical con- 
ception. Instead of a supernatural agent acting out- 
side of the Cosmos, the metaphysicians postulated an 
agent within the organism. Just as a Vital Prin- 
ciple was invoked to explain life in general, so an 
Intelligent Principle was invoked to explain the con- 
scious life of man in particular. Philosophers pic- 
tured the mind as being somewhat like a political 
State where intellect and conscience ruled by a kind 
of divine right. Their authority was liable to be 
overturned. Evil, in fact, was the result of mental 
and moral anarchy. The lower passions were in 
revolt against the higher. Thus we have Butler 
plaintively remarking that if Conscience had power 
as it had right, it would rule the world. The pro- 
cess of thought was personified until the intellect 
became, not a generalized term, but an active agent. 
As Samuel Bailey says: "The faculties have been 
represented acting like independent agents, giving 



THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 107 

birth to ideas, passing them on to each other mutually, 
and transacting their business among themselves. 
In this kind of phraseology the mind often appears 
like a sort of field in which perception, reason, mem- 
ory, imagination, will, conscience, the passions, pro- 
duce their operations like so many powers, either 
allied or hostile." 

Mr. Spencer revolutionized Psychology by abolish- 
ing the absolute distinctions which metaphysicians 
had drawn between mind and the outer world, 
between subject and object. He dethroned entities 
and abstractions by the simple process of represent- 
ing mind and matter, not as two antithetical sub- 
stances, but as two phases of one cosmical process. 
Mr. Spencer has made it impossible to speak of the 
mental life of man as being under the control of 
a Principle of Intelligence, or mysterious Entity, 
which creates and directs thought. In the Spen- 
cerian philosophy Psychology stands in close and 
necessary relation to Biology. In both departments 
two all-mastering conceptions hold sway — the con- 
tinuity of phenomena, and the intimate relations 
between the organism and its environment. If 
there is no absolute distinction between non-living 
and living matter, it follows that between the 
earliest and the latest manifestation of psychical 
life there can be no absolute demarcation. Between 
the humblest expressions of life in the animal world 



108 HERBERT SPENCER 

and the highest manifestations in the intellect of 
man, the difference is not one of kind but of degree. 
The Spencerian Psychology is based, not on the 
pre-evolution view that mind is an entity with 
supernaturally endowed capacities, capable of being 
studied apart from its material mechanism, but on 
the idea that the mental faculties are evolved by 
slow and imperceptible gradations, along with a 
slowly evolving mechanism, in response to move- 
ments in the environment. And thus we are 
brought back to Mr. Spencer's definition of life as 
the continuous adjustment of internal to external 
relations. The organism, however humble, can only 
continue in existence by maintaining a correspond- 
ence with its environment. Where the environment 
is simple, the organism is simple. " A plant's vital 
processes display adjustment solely to the continu- 
ous co-existences of certain forces surrounding its 
roots, and vary only with the variations produced 
in these elements and forces by the sun. The life 
of a worm is made up of actions referring to little 
else than the tangible properties of adjacent things." 
Progress towards higher life implies ability in the 
organism to respond to more special and more com- 
plex movements in the environment. Among the 
humbler organisms the correspondences in the envi- 
ronment are so few that the same structures are 
capable of performing diverse functions, but a study 



THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 109 

of biology shows that division of Labor takes place, 
so that in presence of a complex environment organ- 
isms, in order to live, must develop complex struc- 
tures. Biologically speaking, the degree of life 
varies with the degree of correspondence. At a 
certain stage in the evolution of life, the environ- 
ment becomes so complex that the correspondence 
cannot be maintained automatically by the organism, 
however greatly differentiated in structure and func- 
tion. There comes a limit, for instance, to the ca- 
pacity of sight and hearing to discriminate, as it 
were, automatically among the external changes. 
At this limit life purely physical shades into life 
psychical. In the higher animals the ability to 
respond to complex external relations is associated 
with a specialized form of matter called nerve mat- 
ter, which in its highest development is associated 
with Consciousness. The science of Psychology, 
then, in the strict sense of the terra, begins with the 
dawning of Consciousness. Or, as it must be other- 
wise expressed. Psychology is that dejpartment of 
science which deals with the evolution of Conscious- 
ness by means of which, and under the direction of 
which, the mind maintains its correspondence with 
an environment no longer purely material, but in- 
cluding history, society, and all the influences which 
flow from the atmosphere of conscious life and 
thought — in a word, of civilization. It is impossi- 



110 HERBERT SPENCER 

ble in brief space to indicate in detail the masterly- 
manner in which Mr. Spencer shows the close and 
intricate correspondence between life and its environ- 
ment, and the unrivalled skill with which he traces 
the dual process of evolution of mind and its environ- 
ment, developing from the simple to the complex by 
successive integrations and differentiations. 

The problem of Psychology, on the subjective 
side, is to discover and determine the evolutionary 
process of Consciousness — in other words, the law 
of intelligence. If life in general is definable as 
correspondence between internal and external re- 
lations, obviously mental life in particular, or intelli- 
gence, must be included in the definition. It is idle 
to inquire into the ultimate nature of Consciousness 
or Intelligence. We know no more about the start- 
ing-point of Consciousness than we do about the 
starting-point of Matter. In both cases we begin 
with the homogeneity which we find in Nature, and 
with that as the basis we try to discover the cause 
of all the complex developments. In its ultimate 
analysis Mr. Spencer fiends Intelligence to rest upon 
the recognition of likeness and unlikeness between 
primary states of feelings. Grant to the mind the 
power of recognizing and distinguishing feelings, 
and it is plain that the entire mental life of hu- 
manity, from that of a savage to, say, a Newton, is 
the result of continuous differentiation and Integra- 



THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 111 

tion of states of consciousness. What is the law of 
intelligence ? The law is no other than the associa- 
tion of ideas. "When any two psychical states, 
occur in immediate succession, an effect is produced, 
such as that if the first subsequently recurs, there 
is a certain tendency for the second to follow it." 
Upon this law all education is based, and upon it 
rests the cogency of the sayings, " Practice makes 
perfect," and "Habit is second nature." What, 
then, are the evolutionary stages in the growth of 
intelligence ? The first stage is reflex action, in 
which a single impression produces a single sensation. 
Reflex action scarcely comes within the domain of 
Psychology, as, being automatic, it is performed 
without consciousness. Its significance consists in 
the fact that it is the connecting link between bio- 
logical and psychological phenomena. Instinct is 
a highly developed form of reflex action. With in- 
stinct we have a combination of movements follow- 
ing a combination of impressions, but in the course 
of development the environment becomes so complex 
that even highly developed instinctive actions are 
not able to maintain their automatic responses to 
the environment. The co-ordination becomes ir- 
regular. So long as the actions between the organ- 
ism and the environment are automatic, memory 
cannot exist. Memory emerges when the corre- 
spondence is not complete. When the adaptation is 



■m 



112 HERBERT SPENCER 

re-formed, when the adaptation is again complete, 
memory lapses into instinct, as may be seen in the 
fact that a musician, who at first strains his faculties 
to remember the notes of a new piece, by and by 
plays the tune automatically, even so far as to carry 
on a conversation at the same time. That is to say, 
he plays instinctively, without memory being called 
into exercise. What of Reason? Is it a super- 
natural endowment, or an evolutional product? 
According to Spencer, Reason cannot be absolutely 
demarcated from Instinct. The difference between 
them is one of degree, not of kind. So long as the 
adjustments between internal and external relations 
are simple and permanent, they are made instinc- 
tively. Instinct may be defined as unconscious 
adjustments. When the adjustments are many, 
complex, and temporary, deliberation comes into 
play. Reason may be defined as conscious adjust- 
ments. The process of evolution is thus luminously 
sketched by Mr. Spencer : " While on the one 
hand instinctive actions pass into rational actions 
when from increasing complexity and infrequency 
they become imperfectly automatic, on the other 
hand rational actions pass by constant repetition 
into automatic or instinctive actions. Similarly we 
may here see that, while on the one hand rational 
inferences arise when the groups of attributes and 
relations cognized become such that the impressions 



THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 113 

of them cannot be simultaneously co-ordinated, on 
the other hand rational inferences pass by constant 
recurrence into automatic inferences or organic in- 
tuitions. . . . The genesis of instinct, the develop- 
ment of memory and reason out of it, and the 
consolidation of rational actions and inferences into 
instinctive ones are alike explicable on the single 
principle that the cohesion between psychical states 
is proportionate to the frequency with which the 
relation between the answering external phenomena 
has been repeated in experience." At this stage 
emerges Mr. Spencer's great philosophical contribu- 
tion, whereby he revolutionized the science of Psy- 
chology by bringing to an end the historic feud 
between the Intuitionalists and the Experientiahsts. 
In order to appreciate the full force of the Spen- 
cerian theory of reconciliation, it is necessary to 
present a historical sketch of the famous philosophic 
feud, beginning with John Locke. Locke's whole 
system of metaphysics rests on the idea that the 
mind or soul exists as an agent independent of the 
external world. The problem he set himself to 
solve was the exact relation between the mind and 
the world. Dissatisfied with the theory of innate 
ideas, Locke took up the position that all knowledge 
comes through the senses, consequently ideas are 
the counterparts of sensations. The question which 
immediately faced Locke was this — What is that 



114 HERBERT SPENCER 

tiling called Matter which is the basis of all our 
knowledge ? He saw that all the properties of 
Matter could not exist exactly as they seemed to 
exist, because many of them were conditioned by 
the mind itself. Light and heat, he saw, did not 
exist as properties apart from the mind — they 
existed only in relation to the mind. But if matter 
is clothed by the mind with secondary qualities, 
what guarantee is there that the primary qualities 
are not also in some ways conditioned by the 
mind ? The result of Locke's inquiry was to leave 
the mind just where Descartes left it — in the posi- 
tion of a self-acting entity. He dethroned innate 
ideas, but he put nothing in their place. With 
Descartes the mind was a constitutional monarch, 
conditioned in all its workings by innate ideas. 
With Locke the mind was still a monarch, but one 
whose system of government had fallen into anarchy. 
Berkeley detected the fatal consequences of Locke's 
philosophy. In order to dispel anarchy he got rid of 
Locke's dilemma about the primary and secondary 
qualities of matter by abolishing matter altogether. 
According to Berkeley, Spirit, not Matter, was the 
real substance of the Universe. At this stage Hume 
appears, and in effect says to Berkeley : If there 
is no evidence of the existence of matter as a per- 
manent substance, there is a like want of evidence 
for the existence of mind as a permanent substance. 



THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 115 

What, says Hume, we are conscious of is not an 
entity called mind, but a chain of feelings linked 
together by association. In the hands of Hume 
the reasonings of Locke and Berkeley ended in 
scepticism. Locke's theory, like Berkeley's, was 
formulated in the interests of Theology. Locke 
hoped to find in Causation a stepping-stone to a 
great First Cause ; Hume, by substituting Associa- 
tion for Causation, knocked the props from Theol- 
ogy. By resolving mind as an entity into a series 
of feelings linked by association, Hume also knocked 
the props from Psychology. Hume drove Theology 
and Philosophy into bankruptcy — that is what con- 
stitutes him an epoch-making force in the history of 
thought. 

Hume's destructive criticism roused into philo- 
sophic activity Immanuel Kant, whose contribution 
to the problem took the shape of innate forms of 
thought, instead of the innate ideas of Descartes. 
Great as are the differences among the Germans, 
they all, from Kant to Hegel, endeavor to break 
the force of Hume's criticism by re-establishing in a 
more plausible and subtler form the conception of 
a self-acting Ego, a spiritual agent endowed with 
potencies and capabilities, with forms of thought 
apart from experience. An attempt has been made 
in England to modernize Kant and Hegel, but it can- 
not be said that the attempt, headed by the late Pro- 



116 HERBERT SPENCER 

fessor Green, has been a success. Neo-Kantianism, 
instead of the old forms of thought, postulates a 
single active self-conscious principle, a transcen- 
dental unifying principle, "the one subject which 
sustains the world and is the real knower in all finite 
intelligences." Professor Seth Pringle-Pattison effec- 
tively disposes of this latest attempt to construct an 
Idealistic theory when he says it is of a piece with 
the Scholastic Realism which hypostatized humanitas 
or homo as a universal substance, of which individual 
men were in a manner the accidents. Similarly 
here the notion in general — the pure Ego — which 
is reached by abstraction from the individual is 
erected into a self -existent reality, "an eternally 
complete self-consciousness, of which the individual 
is an imperfect representation or mode." Hume's 
destructive theory was far-reaching. If the mind 
was no entity, but a process, clearly a blow was 
struck at innate ideas and intuitive forms of thought. 
Naturally Hume's conception of mind commended 
itself to the Experiential philosophers like the two 
Mills, in their crusade against the intuitional theory 
of morals. With John Stuart Mill, mind resolves 
itself, as with Hume, into a permanent possibility 
of feeling. Mill's philosophy was transitional. 
Effective enough in its polemic against the reigning 
Intuitionalism, Empiricism, even in the hands of an 
acute thinker like Mill, was incapable of returning 



THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 117 

satisfactory answers to the fundamental problems of 
Psychology. In regard to the root question, that 
relating to the constitution and function of the mind, 
Mill remained virtually at the position of Locke. 
When the Darwinian theory of man's origin began 
to gain general acceptance, it was evident that 
Psychology would be profoundly influenced. If no 
break was discoverable in the evolution of animal 
forms, the difficulty was increased of making the 
human mind an isolated entity with a specially 
created constitution, in which were embedded a 
priori forms of thought. Equally difficult was it to 
conceive the mind as possessing nothing but a 
susceptibility to impressions. Thinkers began to 
ask whether the Darwinian theory did not involve 
the view that mind also was gradually evolved from 
a lower form of life. Pursuing this line of thought, 
^ven before Darwin popularized it, Spencer reached 
the far-reaching conclusion that what had hitherto 
been accepted as necessary truths by the Intuition- 
alists, and which the school of Mill never could 
resolve into individual experiences, were beliefs 
which, though a pi'iori to the individual, were a 
posteriori to the race. 

Here, indeed, was a luminous conception — a 
conception by the aid of which Empiricism was able 
to make most serious inroads upon the Kantian 
answer to Locke and Hume. As Mr. Fiske puts 



118 HERBERT SPENCER 

it ; " Locke was wrong in calling the infant's mind 
a blank sheet upon which experience is to write 
knowledge. The mind of the infant cannot be 
compared to a blank sheet, but rather to a sheet 
already written over here and, there with invisible 
ink, which tends to show itself as the chemistry of 
experience supplies the requisite conditions. Or, 
dropping metaphor, the infant's mind is co-related 
with the functions of a complex mass of nerve-tissue, 
which already has certain definite nutritive ten- 
dencies. The school of Leibnitz and Kant was 
wrong in assuming a kind of intuitional knowledge, 
not ultimately due to experience. For the ideas 
formerly called innate or intuitional are the results 
of nutritive tendencies in the cerebral tissue, which 
have been strengthened by the uniform experience 
of countless generations until they have become as 
resistless as the tendency of the dorsal line of the 
embryo to develop into a vertebral column. The 
strength of Locke's position lay in the assertion that 
all knowledge is ultimately derived from experience 
— that is, from the intercourse between the organism 
and the environment. The strength of Kant's posi- 
tion lay in the recognition of the fact that the brain 
has definite tendencies, even at birth. The doctrine 
of Evolution harmonizes these two seemingly opposite 
views, by showing us that in learning we are merely 
acquiring latent capacities, by more or less powerful 



THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 119 

nutritive tendencies, which are transmissible from 
parent to child." 

What Kant described as a^n'on principles Spencer 
declared to be racial experiences which, by their 
constancy and universality, have become organic 
forms of thought operating with all the force of 
intuitions. Manifestly, Spencer's matchless con- 
tribution to Psychology was rendered possible by 
his destruction of the old conception of mind as a 
self-centred entity with supernatural endowments 
or metaphysical properties, and the substitution of 
the conception of mind as co-related with matter — 
mirroring its movements, and subject to the law of 
reciprocity. Mind, in the Spencerian view, is no 
entity, but a specialized form of a universal process, 
and evolving in correspondence with its environment. 
Up till Spencer began to write, mind had been almost 
exclusively studied by the introspective method. 
It was treated as an abstraction, and even followers 
of Hume, like Mill, who had given up the old idea 
of a separate mental substance, never realized the 
importance of associating Psychology with Biology, 
and studying mental processes in their earlier pre- 
human manifestations. 

Mr. Spencer's two volumes on Psychology are not 
only an epoch-making work in the region of meta- 
physics, but they have also proved the forerunner 
of a new method in the study of brain and nerve 



120 HERBERT SPENCER 

dissolution as well as of evolution. So long as 
the mind was treated as an entity, so long was 
Psychology barren in the region of practical life. 
When, however, the conception of mind as co- 
related in structure and function to a material 
organ and a nervous system became clear to Mr. 
Spencer, it was plain that mental processes could 
only be adequately studied through their physical 
equivalents. If the development of intelligence 
keeps pace with a developing nervous organization 
and increased complexity of brain, if the process of 
evolution is not divisible into two sections, one 
physical and one mental, there is no escape from 
the conclusion that the lapse from intelligence, or 
mental dissolution, will have its physical equivalent 
in the shape of a disordered nervous organization 
and diseased brain structure. In that case Psy- 
chology, as expounded by Mr. Spencer, becomes a 
valuable aid to the practical physician. That it is 
so, I am assured by no less an authority than Dr. 
Hughlings Jackson, who in a private letter to me 
states that he has "found Mr. Spencer's Principles 
of Psychology more useful than any other works 
on psychology in the study of those diseases of the 
nervous system which have a mental side. I 
believe that Mr. Spencer's doctrines of Evolution 
and Dissolution are of very great value in the 
methodical analysis of cases of insanity, and further 



THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 121 

that, on the basis these doctrines supply, relations 
of different kinds of disease of the highest cerebral 
centres to one another can be traced, and also re- 
lations of disease of these centres to diseases of 
lower centres of the nervous system." Another dis- 
tinguished authority. Dr. Mercier, whose writings 
have done much to elucidate the pathological as- 
pects of mental evolution, writes me as follows : 
" My idea of the value of Spencer's work is that he 
has done for co-ordinations in Time what Newton 
did for co-ordinations in Space, and by so much as 
the intricacy and multiplicity of the former exceed 
those of the latter, by so much does Spencer's 
achievement exceed Newton's. In my own official 
work — in Neurology, Psychology, and especially in 
Pathology, I may almost say in the case of the 
two former and quite in the case of the latter, he 
has reduced chaos to order. He has at any rate 
discovered the fundamental principles of these 
sciences, and whatever systems are erected in 
these sciences in the future must be erected on 
the foundations he has laid. I am at present 
engaged upon a book on Psychology in which I 
am essaying to expand and apply his principles, to 
supplement and fill in his outlines." This is suffi- 
cient answer to those who contend that the Spence- 
rian philosophy, like the Hegelian, is a fantastic piece 
of theorizing, having little or no basis in reality. It 



122 HERBERT SPENCER 

is Mr. Spencer's merit as a psychologist that to the 
keenest speculative vision he unites a devotion to 
fact so minute as to give his writings the stamp at 
once of philosophic profundity and eminent practical 
utility. 

"But," exclaims the startled reader, "if mental 
life develops from biological life by unbroken stages, 
there is no escape from Materialism." Foreseeing 
this objection, Mr. Spencer has been careful to point 
out that the terms Matter and Mind are after all 
symbols, not absolute existences. When the philo- 
sophical scientist endeavors to understand the nature 
of Matter and Mind, he is baffled. 

Though he may succeed in resolving all properties 
of objects into manifestations of force, yet, says Mr. 
Spencer, " he is not thereby enabled to realize what 
force is. Similarly, though analysis of mental actions 
may finally bring him down to sensations as the 
original materials out of which all thought is 
woven, he is none the forwarder ; for he cannot in 
the least comprehend sensation — cannot even con- 
ceive how sensation is possible. He sees that the 
materialist and spiritualist controversy is a mere 
war of words. ... In all directions his investiga- 
tions eventually bring him face to face with the 
unknowable. He learns at once the greatness and 
the littleness of human intellect, its power in 
dealing with all that comes within the range of 



THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 123 

experience ; its impotence in dealing with all that 
transcends experience. He feels, with a vividness 
which no others can, the utter incomprehensibleness 
of the simplest fact considered in itself. He alone 
sees that absolute knowledge is impossible. He 
alone knows that under all things lies an impene- 
trable mystery." Students who have not gone to 
the root of his philosophy conclude that because 
Spencer, as distinct from Hegel, treats of the evolu- 
tion of concrete Matter instead of abstract Spirit, 
therefore he is a Materialist. What Mr. Spencer 
says is that thought is conditional upon brain 
structure, and that increasing complexity of brain 
structure is paralleled by increasing complexity of 
intelligence ; in both cases the law of evolution 
holds good. He is no Materialist. Like Job, 
Goethe, Carlyle, and all kindred thinkers, Mr. 
Spencer stands uncovered before the Power behind 
phenomena — that mysterious, awe-inspiring Power, 
the source of all phenomena, material and mental, 
the Infinite and Eternal, before which, now as of 
old, the fit attitude of the human soul is one of 
sacred silence and devout humility. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 

What is called progress in the purely organic world 
has been seen to consist in a series of structural and 
functional changes from a relatively simple state of 
organization. Does social progress conform to the 
same law ? According to Mr. Spencer, the formula 
which is applicable to purely physical phenomena 
embraces also social phenomena. Society, like an 
organism, begins in a state of relative simplicity, 
and by a series of structural and functional changes, 
reaches a state of relative complexity. The task 
which lies before the Sociologist is that of tracing 
the evolution of society through its various stages, 
from the primitive tribe to the highest form of 
civilization. Here as elsewhere he is not primarily 
concerned with the question of origin. In treating 
of cosmical evolution, the evolutionist commences 
with the nebulse ; in dealing with organic evolution 
he begins with indifferentiated protoplasm ; and in 
studying the development of society his starting- 
point is primitive man as historically discernible. 

124 



ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 125 

The task of the evolutionist is clearly defined : he 
has to discover the cause and law of social progress. 
His first duty is to endeavor to get back to the 
starting-point of human history, to the doings of 
primitive man. 

Whatever view is taken of man's relation to the 
animal world, one thing is certain — his condition 
when history first catches a glimpse of him was not 
far removed from animalism. Primitive man was 
a creature of appetites and instincts controlled by 
rigorous necessities. Led by the senses, he was 
utterly devoid of morality in any real sense of the 
term. Marriage was unknown ; the social bond 
weak and uncertain ; life resolved itself into a 
bitter struggle for existence among a discordant 
mass of antagonistic units. In a word, society was 
in a fluid state resembling the nebulae of the pre- 
planetary period. By what means was a start made 
in the direction of social integration ? To the Soci- 
ologist the answer to this question is of fundamen- 
tal importance. Once the cause of social progress 
is discovered, we have within our grasp the key to 
civilization. The cause of social progress must be 
found in the nature of primitive man. A reference 
to JNIr. Spencer's Principles of Psychology shows that 
whether the habits of an animal shall be solitary 
or gregarious depends upon the relation between 
the two most general functions — self -maintenance 



126 HERBERT SPENCER 

and race-maintenance. Those animals which can 
adequately provide for their own wants lead solitary 
lives ; whereas those which cannot supply their 
individual wants live and act in concert. Now of 
all animals man is least fitted to lead a solitary life ; 
some kind of co-operation with his fellows is an 
indispensable necessity. Here, then, is the germ of 
sociality. The germ is increased by the necessities 
of race-maintenance. It is a physiological fact that 
the higher and more complex the physical and mental 
organization, the longer the period of infancy. How- 
ever crude and unsatisfactory the affection between 
mother and child in primitive times, it must have 
been kept alive and increased during the period of 
infancy. Not that domestic relations had any co- 
herence or stability. There is good reason to believe 
that the family was not the earliest form of social 
organization. A species of domestic communism 
seems to have preceded famil}^ life, but under what- 
ever form, the tie between mother and child was 
enduring. Civilization on its highest and noblest 
side is rooted in motherhood. Even in primitive 
society the strength of affection fostered by the 
maternal relationship did something to counteract 
the force of the purely selfish feeling, and to increase 
the fund of sociality. Sooner or later the family as 
an institution was bound to evolve from tribal chaos ; 
and when it did evolve the first step was taken in 



ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 127 

the path of civilization. Upon primitive man, when 
the stage of the family was reached, two pressing 
duties devolved — self-maintenance and family-main/- 
tenance. In other words the cause of social activity 
was man's desire to provide for his own wants and 
the wants of those dependent upon him. Comte, 
followed by Mill, makes the intellect the chief cause 
of progress. According to them, civilization is 
prompted and controlled by ideas. Ideas play a 
great and ever-increasing part in civilization, but 
they are not the prime cause. Progress has an 
economic root. In order to live, in order to main- 
tain correspondence with his environment, man, like 
plants and animals, must have adequate sustenance. 
The first task imposed upon primitive man by the 
rigors of his environment was not to get true ideas, 
was not intellectual culture, but the gratification of 
his physical requirements. He had to live, and the 
first necessity was to supply his material needs. The 
cause of social progress lies not in the intellectual 
but in the physical side of human nature. Society 
took its rise from the fact that man by co-operating 
with his fellows was abler to supply his wants than by 
individual effort. Not that there was any formal con- 
tract, as Locke and Rousseau would have us believe. 
Primitive men formed themselves instinctively into 
tribes in order to lessen the stern struggle for existence. 
With the formation of tribes the struggle for 



128 HERBERT SPENCER 

existence entered upon a new phase. In primitive 
times, owing to man's ignorance of natural laws 
and processes, population constantly outran the 
means of subsistence. Darwin has familiarized the 
modern mind with the view of Nature as an arena 
in which plants and animals are engaged upon a life- 
and-d^ath struggle for existence, a struggle in which 
only the fittest survive. In this arena primitive 
man also fought. We moderns have greatly lessened 
the force of the struggle, because by science we 
have learned to make the means of subsistence out- 
strip the increase of population. But in early times 
life was a perpetual struggle for the means of sub- 
sistence, and naturally the struggle took the form of 
wars between tribes. With an increasing popula- 
tion and a stationary food supply tribes had either 
to starve or steal. A policy of annexation was 
thrust upon men by sheer necessity. 

It needs little reflection to see that wars must 
have been an integrating factor of great force. 
Militarism must greatly have increased the cohesive- 
ness of the tribal bond ; in Spencerian phraseology, 
it made for social integration. Under Militarism 
the individual was necessarily subordinated to the 
tribe or state. This subordination was intensified 
by primitive religions which, by deifying the chief 
or king, identified the law of the tribes or kingdom 
with the will of Heaven. Thus it was that under 



ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 129 

the military regime humanity was ruled both by the 
dead and the living ; indeed, the rule of the dead 
was the stronger, inasmuch as the ruler was only- 
obeyed so long as he voiced religion and tradition. 
The development of primitive humanity becomes 
inteUigible when we describe it as progress from 
the tribal stage to a complex military stage by a 
series of integrations and differentiations. But the 
military regime contained one fatal defect. The 
task of procuring sustenance became subordinated 
to that of aggression. War, which in the earlier 
stages was a means to an end, became ultimately 
an end in itself. The nation was divided into 
workers and warriors. Under the influence of reli- 
gion and patriotism, war was glorified as the main 
function of life, and to the military ranks gravi- 
tated the best talent of the community. In the 
words of Buckle : " The three most distinguished 
statesmen Greece ever produced, Solon, Themisto- 
cles, and Epaminondas, were distinguished military 
commanders. Socrates, supposed by some to be the 
wisest of the ancients, was a soldier ; and so was 
Plato ; and so was Antisthenes, the celebrated 
founder of the cynics. Archytas, who gave a new 
direction to the Pythagorean philosophy, and Me- 
lissus, who developed the Eleatic philosophy, were 
both of them well-known generals, famous alike in 
literature and in war. Among the most eminent 



130 HERBERT SPENCER 

orators, Pericles, Alcibiades, and Demostlienes were 
members of the military profession ; as also were the 
two greater tragic writers, iEschylus and Sophocles. 
The most philosophic of all the Greek historians 
was certainly Thucydides, but he, as well as Xeno- 
phon and Polybius, held high military appointments, 
and on more than one occasion succeeded in chang- 
ing the fortunes of war." 

While war was held in the highest honor, indus- 
trial labor was held in the greatest contempt. As 
a consequence, slavery, as we see from the political 
writings of Aristotle, was viewed as the normal 
state of the lower orders. Following this, there 
could be no such thing as distribution of wealth 
among the people. Among ancient nations the 
function of the people was to minister to the pleas- 
ure of the rich, who held a monopoly of power and 
wealth. Of all the nations of antiquity Greece 
came nearest to the modern ideal, but she fell 
because she endeavored to import a democratic 
constitution, suitable to the industrial regime, into 
the military regime. Greece struck the note of 
freedom and individuality, but she was a premature 
development. Greece was born out of due season. 
In a warlike epoch, a democratic community, resting 
upon slavery, and devoting its resources to military 
aggrandizement, could not hope permanently to 
resist the encroachment of a world-wide military 



ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 131 

power. Greece fell a prey to Rome. Rome in her 
turn fell a prey to Militarism with its false eco- 
nomic system. Much has been said of the causes 
of Rome's decline and fall. Many causes were 
at work — religious, moral, social, and political, but 
underlying them all was the one cause which was 
at the root of the decay of ancient civilization, 
namely, the unequal distribution of wealth, with 
the resulting slavery of the populations. Instead 
of production of wealth by means of science and 
industry, there was annexation of wealth by means 
of war and conquest. Instead of distribution of 
wealth on the lines of intelligence and industry, 
there was monopoly of wealth on the lines of 
military force and slavery. The result of this was 
the corruption of the governing classes and the 
deterioration of the lower classes. So long sub- 
ordinated to the State, and treated as a mere chat- 
tel, the individual was totally unfit to cope with the 
fierce liberty-loving independent barbarians who 
broke up the Roman Empire. Under the military 
regime humanity failed to solve the first necessity 
of life — that of adequately providing for its own 
sustenance. The great economic experiment in the 
hands of Militarism had proved a colossal failure. 
Rome arrested human progress, and Rome was over- 
thrown by the progressive instincts of humanity, 
which nothing can permanently thwart. 



132 HERBERT SPENCER 

From the ruins of the Roman Empire there arose, 
slowly but surely, a new social order. This time, 
owing to the widespread anarchy, society was reor- 
ganized, not on the basis of the family or the tribe, 
but on the feudal system. At first it seemed as 
if one kind of despotism had simply been exchanged 
for another. Feudalism was nothing if not despotic, 
and it was difficult to see how society would avoid 
the rock upon which it had already split, the rock 
of Militarism. But in the heart of Feudalism lay 
hidden the germ of progress. When society began 
to assume a relatively settled form, when all the 
great lords' dependants were not needed for mili- 
tary duty, a number were settled around the estates 
as "hinds" and artificers. This social differentia- 
tion had far-reaching consequences. The moment 
an attempt was made to provide for human neces- 
sities by means of labor instead of by war, that 
moment a new hope dawned upon the horizon of 
humanity. From the small body of artificers which, 
slave-like, clung to the bounty of the great feudal 
lords, sprang Industrialism with all its world-trans- 
forming influences. Guizot traces the earlier evo- 
lution of Industrialism as follows : " No sooner was 
society a little settled under the feudal system than 
the proprietors of fiefs began to feel new wants, and 
to acquire a certain degree of taste for improvement 
and cultivation; this gave rise to some little com- 



ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 133 

merce and industry in the towns in their domains ; 
wealth and population increased within them — 
slowly for certain, but still they increased." By 
and by the industrial serfs in the towns of the 
lords' domain began to feel their power. They 
became what the slaves of the ancient world never 
became, an important factor in the social system. 
To prevent the town serfs from increasing in inde- 
pendence, the lords resorted to harsh and despotic 
measures. Between the two a great struggle for 
supremacy took place. It ended in the triumph of 
the burghers, who freed the towns from the harass- 
ing rule of the feudal law. From this dates the 
emancipation of industry. Henceforth freedom was 
given to a new power in the State. The satisfaction 
of human wants was to be accomplished not by war, 
but by peaceful industry. The individual man was 
at last permitted to secure his own sustenance by 
means of labor, instead of having the fruits of his 
labor taken from him by war and slavery. When 
society acknowledged the right of the individual 
to be what Nature intended him to be, a being 
formed for self-maintenance, the first stage was 
reached in the evolution of an enduring civilization. 
The great problem of social evolution is to preserve 
the spontaneity and freedom of primitive humanity 
along with the social restraints and influences which 
are needful for the cohesion of society. In Spen- 



134 HERBERT SPENCER 

cerian language, the difficulty is to allow the cohe- 
sive or integrating forces in society to have due 
influence without stamping out the principle of 
variation or differentiation, upon which progress 
depends. In the organic world Darwin has made 
us familiar with the truth that plants and animals 
which do not respond to the variation in the en- 
vironment are doomed to disappear in the struggle 
for existence. We have seen that ancient civiliza- 
tion disappeared from the same causes. Religion, 
Government, economic error, all tended to produce 
individual and social stagnation. The different 
nations failed to adjust themselves to outer rela- 
tions, and Nature in her sternest mood stamped 
them out of existence. 

It is now to be seen how modern civilization set 
itself to solve the problem of uniting social cohesive- 
ness with individual variability. Modern civiliza- 
tion in so far as it has been progressive has proceeded 
by successive integrations and differentiations. We 
have already seen the cause of social progress to lie 
in man's efforts to satisfy his material wants. When 
that cause is not allowed to operate, there results 
individual and social stagnation. The operation, 
when allowed to take place, must follow a definite 
law. What, then, is the law of social progress? 
The law is that where material prosperity, the result 
of industry, is the most widely distributed, the 



ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 135 

greater is man's progress intellectually, morally, and 
socially. This has been so well stated by an Amer- 
ican author, Mr. Gunton, who has so admirably 
applied the doctrine of evolution to social phi- 
losophy, that his words deserve to be reproduced: 
" The progress of society towards greater complexity 
of organization, in which the necessity of physical 
effort is diminished, intellectual power and personal 
freedom increased, and moral character elevated, is 
always in the ascending order from the material to 
the intellectual and moral; the material being the 
basis, the intellectual the means, and the moral 
qualities the result." By overlooking the funda- 
mental importance of the economic side of society 
great confusion has been imported into the study of 
civilization. One writer, De Tocqueville, mars a 
series of otherwise profound generalizations by trac- 
ing the social and political phenomena of modern 
societies to the passion for equality, which in his 
view is the distinctive note of democracy. To what 
is the passion for equality due? Had De Tocque- 
ville pursued the subject further, he would have 
found that the passion for equality has its root in 
the economic necessity of man to secure equal rights 
as a primary condition of self-maintenance. Men 
did not agitate for political freedom from an abstract 
love of freedom : they sought for political rights as 
a means of securing the right to labor, and the 



136 HERBERT SPENCER 

right to the fruits of their labor. Like De Tocque- 
ville, Comte went astray in attributing civilization 
to an abstract law like that of the three stages, 
instead of to the economic law that mankind seek to 
satisfy their material wants along the line of least 
resistance. 

When industry began to assert itself, two great 
powers of resistance blocked the way, — the State 
and the Church. In the Middle Ages the people 
were ground under two despotisms, the Roman 
Catholic Church, and the State, as represented by 
the feudal lords and monarchy. How were these 
successfully attacked ? The common view is that 
the Roman Catholic Church had its despotic power 
weakened by the Protestant movement, and that the 
despotism of the Crown and the lords was weakened, 
in this country at least, by the unique concessions 
arising from the Crown and embodied in Magna 
Charta. That the revolt against Roman Catholicism 
had a deeply religious side no one would deny. 
But what made the revolt a success ? A clew to the 
answer is had when it is remembered that the Church 
of Rome came into collision with the new industrial 
ideal. The teaching of the Church, as Mr. Lecky 
well shows, was based on monastic, ascetic, and 
other ideals which were totally incompatible with 
the industrial and commercial spirit. At every 
turn industry and commerce found themselves ham- 



ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 137 

pered by laws and teachings which not only repressed 
individual effort and initiative, which are the roots 
of Industrialism, but which treated the accumula- 
tion of wealth and devotion to money-getting as 
sinful. A religious system which ran counter to 
the economic tendencies of the new industrial epoch 
was bound to come into collision with the growing 
intelligence which a life of secular activity directly 
and indirectly fostered. It was no accident that the 
Reformation, and for that matter political freedom, 
made greatest progress in those countries where the 
towns had gained the greatest success in their con- 
test with the feudal regime. 

It is a significant fact that "England was the only 
country in which the Free Towns were not over- 
powered by either the Church, the Monarchy, or the 
Barons ": and consequently it was the only country 
in which religious, social, and political progress was 
not arrested. The middle classes became a power 
in the State when they wrested the control of the 
towns from the barons, and the same classes, imbued 
with the spirit of freedom and intelligence, the out- 
growth of the industrial regime, broke the back alike 
of Papal domination and aristocratic and monarchic 
despotism. 

One of the elements of perplexity which confront 
the student of civilization is the manner in which 
phenomena, which were at first effects, ultimately 



138 HERBERT SPENCER 

become causes. The desire for material satisfaction, 
which is the primary cause of social progress, leads 
naturally to increased knowledge of Nature. In- 
crease of intelligence, the effect, becomes itself the 
cause of further increase of material prosperity, and 
thus social differentiation, which began instinctively, 
is followed consciously and with rational purpose. 
No thinker has done more to show the close psycho- 
logical connection between this double process of 
civilization than Mr. Spencer, and no thinker has 
done more to focus the historical effects of the process 
than Comte. Upon the mind of the student, Comte's 
picture of the Middle Ages, the fall of the feudal 
regime, and the rise of the industrial epoch, has 
all the effect of a panoramic vision. Were it for 
nothing else than his magnificent historical survey, 
Comte would be entitled to everlasting remembrance 
by philosophic students of intellectual, social, and 
political evolution. 

It is difficult, if not impossible, to estimate in 
detail the value of the various discoveries in science, 
the increase of knowledge, the rapid progress of 
inventions, upon the development of civilization, 
especially on the side of complexity and variability. 
To these we must largely attribute the great contrast 
between the fixity of ancient civilization and the 
flexibility of modern civilization. But two causes 
must be signalized as exerting a momentous influ- 



ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 139 

ence upon the great evolutionary course of society, 
namely the substitution of Free Trade for Protec- 
tion, and the substitution of machine for hand laboi*. 
In the past these have produced great effects, the 
full force of which, however, will not be felt till 
the removal of disturbing influences in the form of 
certain politico-economic delusions. Even yet the 
old superstition about the evil effect of machinery is 
alive in the mind of working men; and they are not 
to blame when they can quote the depreciatory words 
of Mill in his Political Economy. And as regards 
Free Trade, the world is yet far from admitting the 
truth of the great economic conceptions of Adam 
Smith, who did for the industrial what Newton did 
for the physical world. 

What is the precise relation of Adam Smith's 
economic gospel to the evolution of society? No 
greater evidence that the primary cause of social 
progress is not ideas, but desires, is had than the 
unreasoning way in which mankind carried into the 
industrial era the ideas and methods which pertained 
to Militarism. What a sad commentary upon human 
intelligence is the fact that not till the time of 
Adam Smith was the true theory of trade and com- 
merce formulated in a scientific form. For centuries 
trade and commerce were conducted under the influ- 
ence of an economic theory which kept alive the old 
features of antagonism that belonged to the military 



140 HERBERT SPENCER 

period. Under the influence of Protection trade and 
commerce, instead of uniting mankind, kept alive 
feelings of disunion. War, instead of dying away 
in presence of a higher type of civilization, was 
made an instrument of national aggrandizement. 
Nations labored under the delusion — natural enough 
when wealth and conquest were synonymous — that 
they could only become prosperous by beggaring their 
neighbors. In the words of Adam Smith: "Each 
nation has been made to look with an invidious eye 
upon the prosperity of all the nations with which it 
trades, and to consider their trade as its own loss. 
Commerce, which ought to be among nations, as 
among individuals, a bond of union and friendship, 
has become the most fertile source of discord and 
animosity." The intelligent adoption of Adam 
Smith's doctrine as the corner-stone of foreign policy 
is only a matter of time ; and when Free Trade is 
universal, humanity will advance from the stage of 
nationalism to that of internationalism. When that 
day arrives, wars will cease. As I have expressed it 
in my work on Adam Smith: "Free Trade rests, 
not like mercantilism, on national independence, 
but on national interdependence. Under Free Trade 
the progress of one nation makes for the progress of 
all. Fleets and armies are no longer needed to 
secure a monopoly of trade, to preserve the balance 
of power, because in obedience to an economic law 



ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 141 

those countries which are industrially equipped will 
share in the trade of other countries, even in the 
teeth of protective tariffs. Free Trade is not synony- 
mous with a clash of interests, but in essence means 
mutually advantageous exchange of services. Once 
this view is reached, there flashes on the mind the 
vision of a time when the whole world will be bound 
together by the golden chain of self-interest, a self- 
interest which recognizes that, given the conditions 
of liberty and justice, the gain of one is the gain of 
all. Free Trade thus appears in its true light as, 
from the economic side, the application of Christian 
ethics to the international sphere. Nations, instead 
of being hated rivals, each armed to the teeth, lying 
in wait for the other, are seen to be members of a 
great federation, each developing its sources to the 
utmost, and exchanging its products in harmony and 
with mutual profit." What a stride from the fero- 
cious tribal rivalries of primitive man, and the scenes 
of carnage among the great military nations of the 
past, to the doctrine of world-wide peace taught by 
Adam Smith! Well might Richard Cobden de- 
scribe Free Trade as the international law of God 
Almighty. 

What an ennobling vision of humanity would 
have been vouchsafed Adam Smith had he realized 
the extraordinary beneficent impetus which would 
be given to his economic gospel in the age of 



142 HERBERT SPENCER 

machinery. Wonder is often expressed at the ste- 
rility of the intellect of the ancients in the domain 
of inventions and machinery. How could it have 
been otherwise? Even in Greece civilization was 
represented by an aristocratic elect maintained in 
idleness and affluence by a slave population whose 
material wants were few, limited, and stationary. 
Apart from the fact that ancient thinkers looked 
upon labor as the peculiar work of slavery, and were 
therefore not likely to desire methods of saving 
labor, there was not a population sufficiently devel- 
oped to cause a demand for machine-made goods, 
which cannot be produced at a profit unless in large 
and increasing quantities. Until the lower classes 
had advanced so far in material prosperity that there 
arose among them a variety of desires other than the 
purely material — social and intellectual desires — 
there could be no market for the products of ma- 
chinery. The time was ripe when in England there 
had arisen a large and comparatively intelligent 
middle class who were so far removed from the 
claims of physical necessity as to enjoy the pleasures 
and luxuries of life. 

In what way, then, does the substitution of 
machine for hand labor help forward the evolution 
of society? In other words, how does machinery 
contribute to the material prosperity, intellectual 
improvement, and moral elevation of the people? 



ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 143 

In pre-machinery days, when the market for labor 
was small and uncertain, and when the wages bill 
was the main element in cost, high profits could 
only be received by cheap labor. When the market 
was large and increasing, the superiority of machine 
over hand labor turned to the advantage of the 
worker. The advantage is twofold. Intelligence 
on the part of the worker becomes an important fac- 
tor in mechanical superiority; consequently it is to 
the advantage of the master to grant high wages to 
the intelligent worker. Moreover, as the object 
of higher wages is to cheapen production, it follows 
that the worker, who is also a consumer, benefits in 
the cheapening of products brought about by his 
highly paid labor. Thus in a twofold manner the 
working population profits by machinery — by higher 
wages and by their increased purchasing power. In 
the words of an American economist: "A reduction 
in the price puts commodities within the reach of 
another large class who were previously unable to 
consume them, and the market is thereby extended, 
thus enlarging the income without raising the rate 
of profit — all of which tends to further increase the 
demand for labor and to improve the general well- 
being of the community." 

A civilization resting upon hand-made goods 
necessarily involves the hopeless poverty of the 
workers. In such a civilization labor must neces- 



144 HERBERT SPENCER 

sarily be cheap and necessaries dear; whereas in the 
machinery era the situation is reversed — wages are 
increased and the necessaries of life cheapened. 
When we say that wages are increasing, what does 
that imply but that man the worker is increasing in 
value ; and when we say that the necessaries of life 
are being cheapened, what does that mean but that 
for the consumer, who is also the worker, life is 
becoming easier and more comfortable ? The ancient 
civilizations fell because man the worker was of no 
value ; he was treated as a commodity to be bought 
and sold — as an instrument to be used for the selfish 
enjoyment of a minority, whose corruption brought 
social ruin. Modern civilization contains the ele- 
ments of endurance because man the worker is in- 
creasing in value with every increase in intelligence 
and morality. As man the worker is also man the 
consumer, it is clear that every advance in intelli- 
gence, leisure, and morality must raise the standard 
of society till intellectual and aesthetic pleasures 
become no longer the monopoly of a rich and cul- 
tured few, but the heritage of the many. And thus 
we come to understand the Spencerian definition of 
social progress as a complex process of adjustment 
with a complex environment, comprising not only 
material sustenance but all other intellectual, social, 
and ethical pleasures which distinguish a being of 
great potential qualities. Civilization is simply 



ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 145 

the process of adjustment on a large scale whereby 
man's whole nature, physical, intellectual, and 
moral, develops in all its marvellous complexity 
in response to an environment also increasing in 
complexity. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 

In the preceding chapter an attempt was made to 
formulate the cause and law of social evolution. 
The cause is not intellectual, as Comte and Mill 
believed, but economic. Social activity has its 
origin, not in the intellectual side of human nature, 
but in the primitive passions and instincts which 
man shares with the animal creation. Man, like the 
animal, must provide for his material wants, and as 
individual man is the weakest of animals, in order 
to maintain with success the struggle for existence 
he is driven to associate with his fellows. Moreover, 
as was shown, the germ of sociality fostered by 
family life somewhat softens the fierce play of ego- 
ism and lays the foundation of altruism, which in 
the higher forms of civilization flowers in the shape 
of patriotism, philanthropy, and all the heroic virtues 
which link man with the divine. In dealing with 
the political evolution of society it is essential not 
to lose sight of the economic root. Once the eco- 
nomic root is overlooked, the thinker falls into the 

146 



POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 147 

error of attributing political constitutions either to 
the deliberate intentions of despots, as with Hobbes, 
or to a social contract, as with Locke and Roussfeau, 
or to considerations of utility, as with Bentham. 
If the economic root is kept steadily in view, the 
political history of humanity becomes intelligible. 

A flood of light is thrown upon the origin of 
political constitutions by Mr. Spencer's comparison 
of society to an organism. What are the distin- 
guishing characteristics of the animal organization? 
In order that an animal shall live, the animal must 
be possessed of a threefold structure — it must be 
able to maintain itself by the assimilation of food; 
it must have a distributing system, by means of 
which food is carried to various parts of the body; 
and it must have a defensive system, by means of 
which it can regulate its movements in presence of 
enemies. In the most primitive form of society this 
threefold constitution exists in the germ. The tribe 
must provide itself with food, must secure the means 
of subsistence. The manner in which this is done 
determines the nature of the other two structures — 
the distributive and the regulative. In primitive 
times, owing to man's ignorance, the productive 
power of Nature does not keep pace with the increase 
of population ; consequently the system of distribu- 
tion does not, as in later times, take the form of 
friendly barter, of exchange, but of forcible appro- 



148 HERBERT SPENCER 

priation. War is the normal state of primitive 
society. Under these conditions, the political or 
regulative structure is the natural outgrowth of the 
economic structure. In other words, political con- 
stitutions are determined by economic conditions. 

That this is so is evident from a study of early 
societies. Where the economic conditions are simple, 
the distributive and regulative systems are simple. 
Where the economic conditions are complex, the 
distributive and regulative agencies also increase in 
complexity. Society, in the course of its develop- 
ment, obeys the Spencerian law of progress from the 
simple to the complex through successive integra- 
tions and differentiations. Societies are divisible 
into two kinds — Military and Industrial. Not that 
these have existed separately. Under the military 
regime industry necessarily existed, and under the 
industrial regime militarism has never been wholly 
absent. We call a regime military when industrial 
resources are used to support the military system 
in carrying out the national ideal of war. We call 
a regime industrial when industry is the national 
ideal, the army simply being used for defensive 
purposes. Given a tribal kingdom, a nation pre- 
dominantly military, resting upon the idea that 
economic prosperity depends upon the forcible ap- 
propriation of territory, and the political constitution 
will evolve along certain natural and necessary lines. 



POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 149 

In brief, political constitutions are determined by 
social necessities. Where these involve war, as 
must be the case where prosperity is believed to- be 
synonymous with forcible possession of territory, 
everything will be sacrificed for military efficiency. 
The army will simply be the nation mobilized ; 
industry will be exploited in the interest of war, 
and the individual will be subordinated to the State. 
The method of regimentation, so conspicuous in the 
army, will be extended to all classes of the com- 
munity; individual liberty will be reduced to a 
minimum. In a word, an economic conception of 
life which rests on war necessarily involves a political 
constitution resting on despotism. 

History abundantly justifies these generalizations. 
In tribes where wars are rare, individual freedom 
is greatest. With difficulty can the Chief secure 
obedience. Even he himself is allowed to command 
only so long as he pays due deference to tribal 
customs which, though unwritten, have all the 
coercive force of laws. With war, the situation 
undergoes a change. In presence of enemies the 
loosely connected units form themselves instinc- 
tively into a compact mass under the bravest 
leader ; the tribe undergoes a process of integration. 
The democratic form of government which manifests 
itself even in primitive tribes in a peaceful regime 
gives place to a military dictatorship. At this 



150 HERBERT SPENCER 

stage there is no difference between the military 
organization and the political organization. The 
dictators who determine questions of defence and 
offence naturally settle questions of a purely civic 
character. Industry, being an adjunct of the military 
system, comes under the sweep of the principle of 
regimentation which naturally belongs to a state 
of war. Be the outward form of government what 
it may — monarchical or oligarchical — those in pos- 
session of power in the military regime carry into 
the internal management of the nation the principle 
of regulation or despotism, which in the army is an 
absolute necessity. The individual has no rights 
against the State. He is valued only in so far as he 
contributes to the security of the State. In the 
ancient world, where war was the main occupation, 
the individual was used simply as an instrument for 
the glorification of the State. The State might 
grant him privileges ; he could demand no rights. 
In Rome, as the result of social stability, philoso- 
phers began to talk about the law of Nature, and 
progress in the recognition of individual rights might 
have been made but for the eruption of barbarism, 
which overthrew the ancient civilization, and once 
more placed Might on the throne of the world. The 
long reign of militarism was necessary in order to 
produce order out of confusion, and, of course, under 
feudalism despotism again reigned supreme. The 



POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 151 

military dictator under feudalism was as much the 
political dictator as under the great despotic govern- 
ments of the ancient world. To quote from Mr. 
Spencer : " Up to the tenth century each domain in 
France had its bond, or only partially free, work- 
men and artisans, directed by the seigneur, and 
paid in meals and goods. Between the eleventh 
and fourteenth centuries the feudal superiors — 
ecclesiastical or lay — regulated production and 
distribution to such extent that industrial and com- 
mercial licenses had to be purchased from them ; 
in the subsequent monarchical stage, it was a legal 
maxim that "The right to labor is a royal right 
which the prince may sell and subjects may buy " ; 
and onwards to the time of the Revolution the 
country swarmed with officials who authorized 
occupation, directed processes, examined products. 
In the old English period the heads of guilds were 
identical with the local political heads — ealdormen, 
wick-port, or burgh reeves ; and the guild was itself 
in part a political body. Purchases and bargains 
had to be made in presence of officials. Agri- 
cultural and manufacturing processes were pre- 
scribed by law. Dictations, of kindred kinds, though 
decreasing, continued to late times. Down to the 
sixteenth century there were metropolitan and local 
councils, politically authorized, which determined 
prices, fixed wages, etc. 



152 HERBERT SPENCER 

Under Militarism, whether in the ancient world 
or in the modern feudal world, one process may be 
detected, namely, the integration of tribes into com- 
munities, communities into kingdoms, and kingdoms 
into nations. In all cases the inspiring motive was 
the desire for territory by means of war. No doubt 
other causes — such as religion — came into operation, 
but the root-motive of social evolution was economic 
— the desire for wealth on the part of the governing 
classes. War was the instrument of this desire, and 
industrial workers were valued solely as providing 
revenue for the ruler and a commissariat for the 
army. Under such economic conditions, the political 
constitution rested upon despotism, though the form 
which it took differed in different countries. It 
matters little about the form — whether monarchical, 
oligarchical, or feudal — if the result is the same, 
namely, the subordination of the individual to the 
State. Social integration is an indispensable factor 
in progress, but in studying organic evolution we 
saw that an equally important factor is differentia- 
tion, and the power which an organism possesses 
of varying in response to varying agencies in the 
environment. Now the political constitutions which 
evolved alongside of Militarism made no provision 
for the factor of differentiation. Everything was 
fixed by statutes. In industry, in religion, in politics, 
variations which would have been profitable to civ- 



POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 153 

ilization were crushed out. The laborer who 
claimed the right to work for himself was treated 
as a rebel serf, the religious man who claimed a 
right to dissent from the church was a heretic, and 
the political man who rose against consecrated 
despotism was a traitor. Manifestly, under the 
military regime, progress was impossible. Progress 
was in danger of being arrested by a political 
system of despotism. Whence was salvation to 
come ? 

In the previous chapter it was shown that a new 
era appeared when Industrialism began to be of 
more importance than Militarism. When, thanks 
to feudalism, something like social security had 
been reached, not war but industry became the 
means of procuring wealth. Such a far-reaching 
change in human affairs could not take place with- 
out having a marked effect upon political constitu- 
tions. With the rise of the Free Cities the old 
doctrine of Might upon which political despotism 
rested gave place to a new doctrine of Right. 
With the rise of commerce and industry, the nat- 
ural rights of man, which had been hidden from 
view during the long reign of militarism, clamored 
for recognition. The long contest between the feu- 
dal barons and the freemen was something deeper 
than a squabble over charters. At bottom the 
demand of the city-dweller was the demand that 



154 HERBERT SPENCER 

no longer sliould the individual be subordinated to 
the ruling power, that the individual had certain 
natural rights with which no political power, king, 
knight, or legalized government, could meddle. The 
abolition of serfdom had its root in the feeling that 
the individual should no longer receive his freedom 
as a privilege from his feudal superior, but could 
demand it as a right ; and the victory of the towns 
over the barons implied that men of industry and 
commerce had a right to the fruits of their labor. 
The key to the political evolution of society in this 
country, from Magna Charta to the last Reform Bill, 
is found in the fact that the long period was a con- 
test between the old despotic elements in the British 
Constitution founded on Might, and the growing 
industrialism with its demand for the recognition 
of the fundamental rights of man — rights, more- 
over, which have a biological and psychological jus- 
tification — the right to live, the right to think, the 
right to labor, and the right to the products of labor. 
The various modifications in the British Constitution, 
from the absolutism of the Stuarts to the constitu- 
tionalism of the Hanoverians, the oligarchy of the 
Lords, and the democracy of the Reform period, 
represent successive stages in the great contest 
between the old despotism under which the indi- 
vidual had no rights as against the State, and the 
modern view that the duty of the State is not to con- 



POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 155 

fer rights but to safeguard the prime rights of man, 
to which the State itself owes its existence and its 
rationality. 

In confirmation of the view that the political 
constitution of a particular period is conditioned by 
the dominant economic force, is the fact that Magna 
Charta, the starting-point of England's political 
freedom, was the product of the industrial and 
commercial conflict with the military despotism of 
the Crown. True, in the contest the burghers had 
the co-operation of the barons, who single-handed 
were unable to cope with the king. All the same 
the rights embodied in Magna Charta secured the 
burghers against the violence of the barons as well 
as against the despotism of the king. By Magna 
Charta it was declared that no freeman shall be 
deprived of his freehold liberties or free customs, 
be executed, or outlawed, but by lawful judgment 
of his peers or by the law of the land. Here was 
a great advance upon the military regime, which by 
entirely subordinating the individual to the State 
conceded privileges but denied rights. Magna 
Charta established in England the doctrine that the 
individual had a right which the State dare not 
override, namely, the right to justice. Fifty years 
later, another right was wrested by the burghers 
from the State — the right to take part in the 
councils of the nation by returning representatives 



156 HERBERT SPENCER 

to Parliament. After the reign of King John, the 
towns were granted charters which gave them mu- 
nicipal independence, including the right to make 
their own laws, elect their own magistrates and 
judges, levy their own taxes, etc. The economic 
revolution by which the Free Cities rose and flour- 
ished gave an impetus to the political revolution 
which later destroyed the absolutism of the Stuarts, 
weakened the power of the aristocracy, and paved 
the way for the reformed Parliament in which the 
Corn Laws were repealed, slavery abolished. Free 
Trade declared, the legal code purified, and restric- 
tive laws which pressed heavily upon labor re- 
moved from the statute book. 

Further confirmation of the view that political 
evolution is conditioned by economic evolution is 
had in the fact that in those countries where the 
Free Cities were destroyed, where economic progress 
was arrested, the political evolution received a 
check, and a retrograde movement to despotism 
took place. In Spain charters were granted to 
the towns early in the eleventh century, and in the 
twelfth they were represented in the Cortes. The 
benefits of these political reforms were lost by 
the religious wars which raged. In Spain militarism 
was too strong for industrialism, which gradually 
grew weaker and weaker until, in the fifteenth 
century, the burghers ceased to be represented in 



POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 157 

the Cortes. With the weakening of economic forces 
in Spain began the decline of that great nation in 
wealth and political freedom. In Italy the cause 
of political freedom was also arrested by the fall 
of the Free Cities. The decline of material pros- 
perity was followed by the loss of all that makes 
for progress. In France likewise the fall of the 
Free Cities led to the revival of political despotism 
and social misery. In France the burghers were 
worsted in their struggle with the barons, the 
feudal system was re-established in a form so odious 
as to lead to the great Revolution. The Free 
Cities, the outcome of economic forces, by ultimately 
destroying the political system of militarism and 
erecting a political constitution on the idea of 
Right instead of Might, were the birthplaces of 
material prosperity, and as a consequence became the 
nurseries of civilization. 

An American writer, a thinker thoroughly imbued 
with the evolutionary philosophy, sums up the close 
relation between economic and political evolution as 
follows: "If we examine the progress of political 
and religious freedom, we shall find that it has 
always followed the line of the material prosperity 
of the masses, rising where that rose, falling where 
it fell, and becoming permanent only where indus- 
trial improvement had been general and continuous. 
England was the only country in which the Free 



158 HERBERT SPENCER 

Towns were not overpowered by either the Church, 
the Monarchy, or the Barons, and consequently it 
was the only country in which social and political 
progress was not arrested. The Cortes of Spain, 
the States- General of France, and the Republics 
of Italy rose and passed away, scarcely leaving 
their imprint upon the national character, while the 
English House of Commons has ever stood out as a 
conspicuous feature of modern civilization." 

The remark has already been made that in the 
complex phenomena of social life it frequently hap- 
pens that effects become themselves potent causes. 
Thus political constitutions, which are really the 
effects of economic causes, by and by become the 
causes of increased economic prosperity. How, 
then, did legislation influence economic progress ? 
If we study the great legislative reforms of the 
past from Magna Charta to the Reform Bill, we 
find that they may all be summed up in three 
words — Life, Liberty, and Property. Whether we 
study Magna Charta, the Reformation, Free Trade, 
Political Emancipation, we find throughout them all 
the assertion of the right of man to live, to think, 
to labor, and to retain the products of his labor. 
Legislative reform has mainly consisted in repealing 
despotic measures which, congenial to the military 
regime, and sometimes beneficent, were fruitful in 
evil when carried forward to the industrial epoch. 



POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 159 

Of late years a new theory of political evolution 
lias become popular — a theory which cannot possibly 
meet with the endorsement of the Evolution phi- 
losophy as here expounded. From the Spencerian 
point of view, any theory which advocates increased 
power of the State, whether in the form of Socialism, 
Collectivism, or Trade Unionism, stands condemned 
as a retrograde movement, as an attempt to revive 
parts of the political and regulative system which 
belong to the regime of Militarism. If man has 
natural rights, manifestly no power on earth has a 
right to infringe them, be the motive what it may. 
Under a military regime men may have to risk their 
lives and their property to defend the national 
existence, but in a civilization resting upon pacific 
industry no body of men can have a mandate to 
tamper with the rights of their fellows. The funda- 
mental principle of Liberalism which finds ample 
justification in the Evolution philosophy is this — 
Every man is to do that which he wills, provided 
he infringes not the equal freedom of any other 
man. Socialism, Collectivism, and Trade Unionism, 
in their respective spheres, are attempts to destroy 
the initiative and energy of the individual from 
which have sprung the best elements in civilization, 
and revive the principle of regimentation which 
belongs to the military epoch — a principle wliich 
makes man a slave, an automaton, a machine. In 



160 . HERBERT SPENCER 

tlie organic world progress is secured by the survival 
of profitable variations by giving free play to the 
principle of differentiation. Subordinate the man 
to the State, and at once order is secured at the 
expense of progress, and for the healthy evolution 
of civilization we have a repetition of the old pater- 
nal communities of Peru, which were so lacking 
in stamina that they fell before the first blast of 
misfortune. It is no coincidence, but a natural 
sequence, that Socialist ideas at home should lead 
to revival of Militarism abroad. If it is legitimate 
to legislate in the interests of the people in domes- 
tic matters, it becomes equally legitimate to attend 
to their interests abroad. If Parliament is com- 
petent to legislate on behalf of labor at home, it 
is also competent to secure an increase of trade 
abroad by means of diplomatic scheming involving 
the risk of war. The revival of Militarism means the 
revival of despotism, the decay of prosperity, the 
decay of political and individual liberty, and a 
lowering of those national ideals which have inspired 
the best and truest of Englishmen in their heroic 
battle for justice and freedom. 

This retrograde movement receives intellectual 
assistance from a school of political philosophers 
who deny that man possesses natural rights. In 
their view rights are creations of the State ; con- 
sequently there are no first principles in politics, 



POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 161 

only expediencies. If this theory be correct, Mili- 
tarism and Socialism cannot be combated on purely 
intellectual grounds. What has the Evolution 
theory to say to this doctrine, which is simply a 
revival of the social contract theory of Hobbes, 
Rousseau, and Bentham ? The idea of a social 
contract has its root in the error into which Comte 
and Mill fell, namely, the belief that progress is 
the result of knowledge acquired and deliberately 
organized. Now nothing but confusion results till 
the truth is recognized that man's first steps in 
progress are made not by means of his intellect, 
but through the spontaneous operations of his in- 
stincts, desires, and passions. Hobbes had a glimpse 
of this truth, but he missed its significance by his 
defective view of human nature. Man, with Hobbes, 
is purely a selfish animal, and therefore with him 
there was no road out of individual isolation to 
social co-operation except by the way of deliberate 
calculation of the benefits to be derived from the 
social state and deliberate submission to a despot. 
Bentham, like Hobbes, had a low view of human 
nature. The only difference between them was that 
the one saw no hope of social organization except 
through a despotic monarchy, whereas the other 
pinned his faith to a utilitarian democracy. The 
end which Hobbes sought to gain by absolutism, 
Bentham, and for that matter Rousseau, sought to 



162 ^ HERBERT SPENCER 

gain by a popularly elected government whose aim 
was the greatest happiness of the greatest number. 
For the rights of man, which had fallen into dis- 
credit by the excesses of the French Revolution, Ben- 
tham substituted the happiness of man. 

Had Bentham and his followers stopped to analyze 
their political creed rigorously, they would have dis- 
covered that it is impossible to divorce the idea of 
happiness from that of rights. What is meant by 
the popular saying that self-preservation is the first 
law of nature ? What is the meaning of the phrase, 
struggle for existence ? The meaning plainly is that 
man, like the animal, asserts the right to live, the 
right, that is, to exercise his powers and faculties. 
When this right is admitted, happiness follows as 
a natural consequence. Surrounded on all hands by 
enemies and obstacles, primitive man finds existence 
so precarious that, urged on not by deliberate reason- 
ing but by the instinct of self-preservation, he joins 
himself to his fellows. He does not look to govern- 
ment to procure happiness ; he expects government 
to safeguard his freedom and security, which are the 
conditions of happiness. Primitive man loses his 
freedom in ways already indicated. Governments, 
tribal and other, rob him of his freedom, and then 
begins the contest between the individual and the 
State. If it is the function of governments to legis- 
late for the greatest happiness of the greatest number. 



POLITICAL EVOLUTION pF SOCIETY 163 

such a social state is quite compatible with the un- 
happiness of the minority, and thus under Bentham 
as under Hobbes the individual has no claims against 
the State, which fulfils its duty when the happiness 
of the majority is secured. On the other hand, if 
the function of the State is to safeguard the rights 
of man — the right to live, to think, and to labor — 
then the requisite conditions are secured for the in- 
dividual to realize his own happiness. By making 
happiness the direct aim of legislation you deprive 
a minority of their happiness ; by making liberty the 
direct aim, you produce happiness as a natural con- 
sequence, or at least you make the happiness of the 
individual the direct result of his own conduct. If 
he chooses to abuse his right to liberty, he cannot 
blame the State for his unhappiness, whereas under 
the Benthamite constitution the happiness of the 
minority is necessarily interfered with to increase 
the happiness of the majority. Or as it might be 
put otherwise, happiness in man is the natural con- 
sequence of the development of his instincts, de- 
sires, and faculties. This development cannot take 
place unless under favorable conditions — in other 
words, where liberty to develop is secure. Thus the 
conclusion is reached that so far from society being 
dependent upon government for its existence, gov- 
ernment is simply an effort to procure the necessary 
conditions for the proper development of society. 



164 HERBERT SPENCER 

Society exists before government. Governments do 
not exist for the purpose of laying down the prin- 
ciples of social co-operation. Social co-operation 
grows out of the desire of men for one another's 
society for purposes of mutual help. The true func- 
tion of government is to see that the individual in 
the assertion of his liberty does not encroach upon 
the liberty of his fellow. Nowhere has the distinc- 
tion between society and government been more 
clearly stated than in the writings of Paine, the 
author of The Rights of Man : " A great part of that 
order which reigns among mankind is not the effect 
of government. It had its origin in the principles 
of society and the nature and constitution of man. 
The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which 
man has in man and all the parts of a civilized com- 
munity upon each other create the great chain of 
connection which holds it together. The more per- 
fect civilization is, the less occasion has it for 
government, because the more does it regulate its 
own affairs and govern itself." Government "is 
nothing more than a national association acting upon 
the principles of society " — a definition very differ- 
ent from the one given by those who deny the rights 
of man, namely, that society is the creation of gov- 
ernment and needs to be regulated by paternal 
methods. 

In their practical results these opposing theories 



POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 165 

may be studied in the Old and New Liberalism. 
About the time of the French Revolution, Liberalism 
underwent an important change — a change which 
Burke was the first to detect. Rousseau shifted the 
foundation of Liberalism from natural rights to 
political rights. According to the French thinker, 
the fundamental right of man was not the right to 
liberty, but to an equal share in the government of 
the country. The people in the exercise of their 
political rights being in the majority were sovereign ; 
what, and only what, they legislatively declared to 
be rights were treated as rights. The hitherto 
accepted natural rights (liberty and property) could 
be annihilated by the fiat of the all-powerful majority. 
It is this French theory of political thought which 
has passed into British politics under the name of 
the New Liberalism. According to the Old Liber- 
alism, every man has a right to his own property; 
according to the New Liberalism the majority have 
a right to encroach upon other people's property in 
order, as Mr. Chamberlain's "Radical programme" 
puts it, to increase the comforts and multiply the 
luxuries of the masses. The Old Liberals would 
have spurned such an interpretation of their creed. 
In their view, justice and liberty had nothing to do 
with majorities and minorities. They fought against 
slavery, not because it was supported by a powerful 
minority, but because slavery was a violation of the 



166 HERBERT SPENCER 

fundamental right of man to personal liberty. The 
Old Liberals fought for toleration, not on the major- 
ity principle, but on the principle that no power on 
earth had a right to interfere with liberty of con- 
science. The Old Liberals advocated an extended 
franchise, not in order to shift absolute power from 
the classes to the masses, but in order to give every 
citizen the power to protect his interests. In other 
words, with the Old Liberals an extended franchise 
was meant to be a safeguard, not an engine of 
oppression. The Old Liberals strove to secure for 
every man equality of opportunity; the New Liberals 
are striving to procure equality of conditions. They 
tell Lazarus, who has been sitting at the rich man's 
gate, to take his place boldly at the rich man's table. 
In Australia the New Liberalism has borne its logical 
fruit. Some years ago, at a meeting in Sydney of 
the unemployed, one speaker demanded that the 
Government should give as a right, not as a favor, 
six shillings a day and guarantee work for twelve 
months. He further advised the unemployed not to 
submit to insults to their independence! On the 
principles of the New Liberalism there is nothing 
to prevent the unemployed, if they are in the 
majority legislatively, dividing the wealth of the 
country among the masses. The passion for equality 
when divorced from the passion for justice becomes a 
potent instrument of national demoralization. On 



POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 167 

one occasion, when Turgot was asked to confer a 
benefit on the poor at the cost of the rich, he replied : 
"We are sure to go wrong the moment we forget 
that justice alone can keep the balance true among 
all rights and interests." France forgot that, and 
went terribly wrong. The Liberal party of the 
present day is in danger of making the same fatal 
mistake. 

To Mr. Spencer belongs the credit of bridging the 
gulf between the two views. Agreeing with Hobbes 
and Bentham that government is a necessity, he 
differs with them as to the origin of that necessity. 
Where Hobbes, Bentham, and Rousseau make hap- 
piness the motive of legislation, Spencer makes it 
the result. According to Spencer the legislation 
has to do, not with happiness, but with justice. By 
tracing the social instincts of man to their biological 
and psychological roots, Spencer shows that the 
motive power of all progress, organic and super- 
organic, in animal and man, is the desire for freedom 
to develop. Grant this, and the first and indis- 
pensable condition of happiness is secured. The 
practical bearing of these two views of society is far- 
reaching. If the function of government is directly 
to produce social happiness, there is no escape from 
paternal legislation, which in practice leads to the 
rule of a despotic majority. If on the other hand 
the function of the government is to maintain the 



168 HERBERT SPENCER 

liberty of the individual, so far as he does not en- 
croach upon the like liberty of his fellows, then not 
only is despotism impossible, but the way is open 
for the development of all kinds of energies and 
talents — in short, for the growth of those individual 
variations which in the social as in the natural world 
are the real elements of all enduring progress. The 
two factors, order and progress, which previous 
thinkers were unable to reconcile, are in the Spen- 
cerian theory brought into a union at once philo- 
sophically satisfying and politically fruitful. 



CHAPTER X 

THE ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 

Two things filled the soul of Kant with awe — the 
starry heavens above and the moral laws within. 
What more natural than that the reflective as well 
as the unreflective portion of mankind should attrib- 
ute these marvellously mysterious phenomena to the 
direct creative act of the Deity? How plausible 
seemed the primitive theory that God created the 
heavens and the earth by His Almighty fiat, by the 
word of His power. For ages the human mind in 
dealing with the starry heavens clung to the concep- 
tion of creation. Similarly with the moral sense. 
Man, it was believed, was created with a keen sense 
of right and wrong, with a faculty called Conscience, 
which was described as God's viceregent in the soul. 
How was this conception harmonized with the ad- 
mitted tendency of man to do wrong? Either Con- 
science spoke with an uncertain voice, or some great 
anarchic revolution had taken place in the soul of 
man whereby God's viceregent was deposed, or Con- 
science itself was the product of circumstances, man 

169 



170 HERBERT SPENCER 

being really at the mercy of his passions, like a 
rudderless ship in a stormy sea. The theory of the 
fall of man held sway in one shape or another for 
ages. Man, it was believed, was created as perfect 
as the starry heavens, but by virtue of free will, man 
had the power of thwarting the design of the Creator; 
by one act of disobedience man entered upon a career 
of racial rebellion. Man, it was said, knew the right 
but preferred the wrong. Conscience reigned but 
did not govern. With the decsij of theological con- 
ceptions, the theory of a separate faculty called Con- 
science, whose function it was to preside over the 
ethical side of human nature, fell into discredit. 
Great efforts were made to preserve in metaphysical 
form the essential idea of the theologic conception. 
Thinkers who had departed widely from the old 
supernaturalism still endeavored to keep alive the 
idea that man was born with an intuitive sense of 
right and wrong. Discarding the theological foun- 
dation, they made strenuous efforts to make Con- 
science a fundamental attribute of human nature. 
Adherents of the intuitive theory of morals were 
faced with one supreme difficulty — that of account- 
ing for the diverse and contradictory views of 
morality existing in different ages of the world and 
among different races of man. On the theological 
theory these diversities and contradictions were 
plausibly explained by the fall of man. Discarding 



ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 171 

the supernatural view of man, the intuitive thinkers 
were incapable of bringing these views into harmony 
with history and experience. 

How was the difficulty to be met ? If Conscience 
is not a supernatural germ implanted in man by 
God, and if the facts of life are incompatible with 
the intuitive theory of an innate sense of right and 
wrong, where is the solution of the problem to be 
found? Another set of thinkers professed to have 
discovered the key to the problem. They declared 
that Conscience is not primary but derivative. In 
their view man's desire for happiness is primary, 
Conscience being compounded of several elements, 
notably the element of coercion which follows from 
the conflict between contending passions in the 
individual and contending individuals in society. 
The efforts of the Utilitarians, from Bentham to 
J. S. Mill, were devoted to the attempt to show 
how the belief in Conscience, the sense of right 
and wrong, may be traced to individual experiences 
of happiness and unhappiness. The Utilitarian 
school failed in the sphere of ethics, as it failed, 
as was shown, in the sphere of economic history, 
by giving undue prominence to conscious reflection 
as an element in primitive progress. Primitive 
men did not seek to acquire wealth from con- 
scious motives, nor did they, as Locke believed, 
draw up a social compact from a deep sense of the 



172 HERBEET SPENCER 

benefits of social co-operation. No more did primi- 
tive men make utility the avowed and consciously 
pursued means of securing the greatest amount of 
happiness. Primitive man was not, as the Utili- 
tarians assumed, a reasoning and calculating animal. 
The Evolution theory in the realm of ethics success- 
fully attacked the problem which the Utilitarians 
found insoluble. So long as morality as a science 
was viewed from the standpoint of empiric Indi- 
vidualism, Utilitarianism as advocated by Mill had 
great difficulty in repelling critical attacks. Spencer 
came to the rescue by substituting the racial for the 
individual standpoint. As he puts it in his letter 
to Mill : " Just in the same way that I believe the 
intuition of space possessed by any living individual, 
to have arisen from organized and consolidated experi- 
ences of all antecedent individuals who bequeathed 
to them their slowly developed nervous organizations 
— just as I believe this intuition, requiring only to 
be made definite and complete by personal experi- 
ences, has practically become a form of thought, 
apparently quite independent of experiences ; so do I 
believe that the experiences of utility organized and 
consolidated through all past generations of the 
human race, have been producing corresponding ner- 
vous modifications, which, by continued transmission 
and accumulation, have become in us certain facul- 
ties of moral intuition — certain emotions to right 



ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 173 

and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis 
in the individual experiences of utility." In his 
highly original work, The Origin and Crrowth of the 
Moral Instinct^ Mr. Alexander Sutherland goes to 
the root of the failure of Benthamite Utilitarianism, 
when he says : " To the individual in actual life, the 
test as to the rightness of an action is never sup- 
plied by a consideration of its usefulness to the race. 
The true test he finds within himself in his instinct 
of sympathy. The philosopher is justified in prov- 
ing that these sympathies have grown up and 
exist within us in order to minister to the use and 
preservation of the species, and it thus happens that 
while morality is founded on sympathy, sympathy 
is founded on utility. It would be doing a gross 
injustice to men such as Bentham, Austin, and Mill, 
to imagine that they were not themselves clear- 
sighted enough fully to perceive this chain of causa- 
tion. But they lost their hold of a general assent 
by suffering the middle link to drop out of view ; 
and the public, which acts rightly, not by reason of 
any abstract notion of utility, but by the inward im- 
pulse of sympathy and duty, has always resented 
what seemed to be the application of a cold and 
pragmatical principle to a warm and beautiful senti- 
ment." Discarding alike the theological theory of 
man as supernaturally created and endowed with 
Conscience, and the Utilitarian theory of man as 



174 HERBERT SPENCER 

guided by reason and consciously testing right and 
wrong by experiences of utility, the evolutionist 
bases his ethical philosophy on the view of man in 
his primitive stage as not much removed from the 
animal, and under the control of desires, passions, 
and instincts. In his view the ethical evolution of 
man is co-related with the economic, political, and in- 
tellectual evolution of society. Ethical codes are not 
supernaturally imposed upon mankind, nor are they 
intellectually elaborated from experiences of utility ; 
they are evolved in the course of man's struggle 
for existence, and are determined by that struggle 
in its threefold aspects — the struggle for self -main- 
tenance, family-maintenance, and race-maintenance. 
In dealing with economic evolution, the question 
was as to the material result — increase and distri- 
bution of wealth. In dealing with political evolution 
the question was as to the conditions — that of liberty 
or despotism — under which the economic forces 
work. In dealing with ethical evolution we are 
concerned with the effect of the economic and politi- 
cal evolution on the feelings and sentiments of man, 
and the reaction of those feelings and sentiments 
upon society. In this connection it is necessary to 
recall the words used in a previous chapter in treat- 
ing of the root-passions of society : " Whether the 
habits of an animal shall be solitary or gregarious 
depends upon the relation between the two most 



ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 175 

general functions — self -maintenance and race-main- 
tenance. Those animals which can adequately pro- 
vide for their own wants lead solitary lives ; whereas 
those which cannot supply their individual wants 
live and act in concert. Now of all animals man is 
least fitted to lead a solitary life ; some kind of 
co-operation with his fellows is an indispensable 
necessity. Here then, is the germ of sociality.'"* 
To this must be now added the remark that in 
sociality we have the germ of morality. The two 
things are distinct though closely related. Sociality 
may exist without morality, as among the lower 
animals, but morality cannot exist without sociality. 
For a true understanding of ethical evolution it is 
essential to trace the gradual and subtle manner in 
which sociality shades into morality. In order that 
we may be able to trace the various stages, it is 
necessary to have a clear idea of the end which 
Nature has in view in social evolution. Unless we 
understand the aim of Nature, no intelligent under- 
standing is possible of the process. The aim of 
Nature is to favor the existence of those individuals, 
families, and organized societies who are most suc- 
cessful in maintaining themselves in presence of 
numerous competitors. We call conduct ethical in 
the highest sense which consciously furthers the 
efficiency of the individual, the species, and the social 
state. In no existing society has this ideal been 



176 HERBERT SPENCER 

realized, but we must keep this ideal in view if we 
wish to trace the various stages in the ethical process. 
Manifestly such a process would be impossible, were 
it not for the element of sociality. Those very 
passions which stamp man as a selfish animal contain 
the germ of sympathy which in higher civilizations 
blossoms into altruism and all the virtues and graces 
which adorn humanity. Adam Smith was right in 
making sympathy the basis of morals, but in the 
absence of knowledge it was impossible for him to 
analyze sympathy, which is a complex quality, into 
its simpler social elements. How does sympathy 
evolve from the rude selfish passions of primitive 
man ? Sympathy develops out of sociality, to which 
primitive man is driven like the animal by his pas- 
sions and necessities. Primitive man is not a con- 
scious co-worker with Nature ; he is carried on by 
forces over which he has no control, the tendency 
of which he cannot detect, and the aim of which he 
cannot understand. The rate at which sympathy 
develops is the measure of ethical evolution. Sym- 
pathy is the root of all the virtues. 

On the ethical side, the struggle which is every- 
where found in Nature resolves itself into a struggle 
between the selfish and sympathetic sides of human 
nature. Other things being equal, Nature favors 
the sympathetic man at the expense of the un- 
sympathetic; the family and tribe bound together 



ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 177 

by sympathy are more than a match for families 
and tribes which are torn by internal dissensions, 
and in which individual selfishness reigns supreme. 
So important are the sympathetic instincts that we 
can detect in the animal world the beginning of 
the great ethical evolution which in mankind has 
reached such an advanced stage. In the earlier 
stages of animal life, Nature secures the perpetua- 
tion of species by means of an extraordinary indi- 
vidual fertility. Among fishes the average mother 
deposits more than 600,000 spawn, out of which 
perhaps one or two remain to maintain the existence 
of the species. Nature scatters the germs of life with 
prodigious prodigality, so as to make sure that in 
the midst of the prodigious destruction a few of the 
germs will be saved. Under such conditions, where 
there is no parental care, sociality is impossible. 
This stage, which may be called that of competitive 
fertility, gives place to another stage, that where 
success in the struggle for existence is determined 
by higher nerve organization, and increased brain 
power and intelligence. Mr. John Fiske has demon- 
strated conclusively that one result of increase in 
nerve and brain organization is prolongation of 
infancy. Thus we find in the more highly organized 
animals a close connection between parent and 
young. The period of helplessness draws forth the 
emotional power of the parents, and among the 



178 HERBERT SPENCER 

higher class of animals we detect features of conduct 
quite human, as when the mother monkey rushes 
with her young to a hiding-place and then turns 
and faces death with a sense of satisfaction. Through 
the animal world the strength of the sympathetic in- 
stincts are in direct relation to the period of infancy, 
which again is determined by the slowness with 
which the complex nervous system and brain evolve. 
When we come to primitive man the process be- 
comes distinctly traceable. To make this plain, it 
is necessary to bear in mind the description in a 
previous chapter of primitive man from the purely 
economic side. "Primitive man was a creature of 
appetites and instincts, controlled by rigorous neces- 
sities. Marriage was unknown; the social bond 
weak and uncertain ; life resolved itself into a bitter 
struggle for existence among discordant units. . . . 
However crude and unsatisfactory the affection be- 
tween mother and child in primitive times, it must 
have been kept alive and increased during the period 
of infancy." The family is the ethical unit as it is 
the economic and political unit. In treating of bio- 
logical evolution, it was seen that environment is 
the controlling cause. Unless an animal can adapt 
itself to its environment, unless its structure and 
functions are in harmony with its surrounding, it 
must perish. It is the same with emotions and 
sentiments. Called forth by the environment, they 



ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 179 

are determined in their nature and force by the 
environment. Now, what is the environment which 
confronts the family as the ethical unit? The en- 
vironment is no other than other families whose 
attitude is that of chronic hostility. Inside the 
family circle certain narrow, rude, but powerful sen- 
timents hold sway — such as paternal and fraternal 
sympathy, courage, self-sacrifice, and the martial 
virtues generally. But there comes a time when, 
for purposes of protection, families join to families, 
and the clan is formed. This extension of the 
environment leads to extension of the sympathies, 
which, no longer confined to the family circle, em- 
brace all who are associated together in defence of the 
clan. With the extension of sympathy inside the 
clan area, there still exists a feeling of hostility to 
all outside. The feeling of clannishness is greatly 
deepened by religion, by bringing into operation the 
sanction of departed chiefs, and by the commands 
issued by living chiefs, whose governments become 
increasingly despotic with the increase of hostile 
relations with tribal enemies. Along with the mili- 
tary regime there evolves an appropriate ethical code. 
The finer and tenderer virtues can have no place in 
a state of society in which war is the dominating 
form of activity, where industry is left to slaves, 
and where cannibalism and infanticide are recog- 
nized features of the national life. In the military 



180 HERBERT SPENCER 

regime the sympathetic qualities of human nature, 
fostered by family life and man's need for social 
co-operation, are arrested, and the few virtues which 
war calls into exercise are of a hard, imperious, and 
loveless type. How potent war is in arresting ethical 
evolution is shown by the fact that in all the ancient 
civilizations, from the barbaric empires of the East 
to the comparative civilizations of Greece and Rome, 
no room was found for the specifically Christian vir- 
tues of gentleness, charity, mercy, benevolence, and 
forgiveness. Morality is not the root but the fruit 
of civilization, and hence in a national life based 
on antagonism to other national lives, those pecul- 
iarly civilized virtues which we identify with love 
of humanity as such, could not possibly blossom. 

In Greece and Rome, in the minds of a few phi- 
losophers, there dawned the idea of an environment 
beyond the confines of the tribe, the nation, and the 
empire. Thanks to the world-wide conquests of 
Rome, the idea of a humanity beyond racial boun- 
daries began to dawn upon the mind of philosophers, 
but at best the feeling was more sentimental than 
real. Socrates spoke of himself as a citizen of the 
world, and Roman Jurists were familiar with the 
idea of a humanity resting, not upon blood relation- 
ships and national privileges, but on natural rights. 
The Founder of Christianity gave this idea vivid 
and practical form when He boldly declared for the 



ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 181 

brotherhood of man on the basis of one Father in 
Heaven. Evolutionists have not done justice to the 
great impetus given to the evolutionary process by 
the Founder of Christianity. Enamoured of massive 
generalizations, students of evolution have sometimes 
under-estimated the immense power in history of 
great personalities, who, by unlocking new forces 
in human nature, have frequently done more than 
general causes to modify the course of civilization. 
Unhappily personal influences tend to be transient, 
and thus it has happened that the pacific creed of 
the Founder of Christianity gradually was pressed 
into the service of war, and ended, in the Middle 
Ages, in narrowing the idea of human brotherhood 
till it became synonymous with a theological concep- 
tion narrower even than the tribal conception with 
its dogma of destruction to all outside the pale. 
Christianity on the ethical side failed because the 
ideas of its Founder were in advance of the time. 
The Sermon on the Mount came into conflict with 
the ethical ideas of the military regime, which lasted 
till the economic revolution produced by the doctrine 
of Free Trade. In fact, the military regime is not 
yet extinct, as may be seen by the revival of Protec- 
tion theories in our day, logically accompanied by 
the increase of armaments as a condition of increased 
trade and commerce. 

Still the economic doctrine of Adam Smith is 



182 HERBERT SPENCER 

destined to have incalculable influence upon ethical 
evolution. The relation of the doctrine of Free 
Trade to ethics is thus stated in my book on Adam 
Smith: "At the first blush it would seem as if, 
from the Darwinian point of view, Nature was given 
over to universal warfare. In In Memoriam Tenny- 
son has given fit poetic expression to the sombre, 
not to say gloomy, thoughts which force themselves 
upon the cultured observer of Nature. Now it is 
usually forgotten that in order to emphasize the 
rationality of his view of the origin of the marvellous 
variety and complexity of species, it was necessary 
for Darwin to call special attention to the struggle 
for existence and its prime cause, namely, the ten- 
dency of population to outrun the means of sub- 
sistence. There are two other tendencies, however, 
which, as not bearing on his particular problem, 
Darwin did not specify, but which must be taken 
into account in any philosophical survey of History, 
namely, the tendency of man, in order to relieve the 
intensity of the struggle for existence, to unite with 
his fellows, and the tendency of man towards in- 
creasing intelligence by which he can increase the 
productive power of nature, thereby checking the 
fierce struggle which in the animal world goes on 
between population and subsistence. See how these 
two tendencies give to human evolution the quality 
of hopefulness. The fierce struggle for existence, 



ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 183 

■vvhich among animals leads to warfare, among men 
has the same result in the earlier days of primitive 
life. But by virtue of his dawning intelligence and 
the germs of co-operation developed in family life, 
men discover the advantages of union. Whereas 
animals fight one another for food which is more or 
less scarce, men by co-operative methods begin to 
grow food, thereby increasing the productive power 
of nature. In order to facilitate the process comes 
division of labor, which leads to barter ; and thus, 
instead of a fierce struggle for existence between 
isolated individuals, we have the beginning of a 
new method, that of co-operative assistance in the 
struggle for existence, and for result great increase 
in the total means of subsistence, and great increase 
in the individual share. The individual who co- 
operates with his fellows may not get all he would 
like, but he gets infinitely more than if he had earned 
his livelihood in solitary fashion." 

Troublous times lie before us ere modern states- 
men incorporate into their foreign policy the great 
truth which Adam Smith taught, namely, that all 
human interests are harmonious. Mankind does not 
seem yet advanced enough ethically to make the 
passage from nationalism to internationalism in 
pacific fashion. On the path of civilization there 
are great stages — tribal, national, and international. 
The state of hostility, as we have seen, is the normal 



184 HERBERT SPENCER 

state of the race in early times. Outside of the tribe 
all is hatred, revenge, and bloodshed. The neces- 
sities of life compel kindred tribes to amalgamate. 
Towards those tribes which remain outside the union 
a policy of hostility is still pursued. Another step 
is taken when the tribes amalgamate over a still 
larger area, and the nation evolves. Within the 
national area, we find reciprocity of interests taking 
the place of the old idea of antagonism of interests : 
the descendants of the old Highland clans live and 
work peacefully with one another, whereas their 
ancestors lived in a state of feud. What brought 
about this change? The necessities of life have 
taught the descendants of the old fighting clansmen 
the truth that peaceful co-operation is more profit- 
able and pleasurable than the old regime of hostility. 
If the student desires to see how the tribal stage 
merges into the national, through the gradual substi- 
tution of co-operation for hostility, he has only to 
peruse Guizot's book on civilization, where the pro- 
cess is traced in impressive panoramic fashion. The 
nineteenth century has borne the greatest share in 
the work of nation-creation. Out of the chaos of 
conflicting interests have been evolved the various 
harmonies which give to the respective nationalities 
a common unity. The course of national evolution 
has reached its natural end, and the energies of the 
various peoples are seeking international outlets. 



ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 185 

The scramble in China, the race for territory in South 
Africa, the expansion of Britain in Egypt, what are 
all these but evidence of the fact that civilization 
is beginning to overflow its old boundaries, and is 
becoming world-wide in its aspirations? It is a 
suggestive fact that humanity has always been under 
the delusion that war is a necessary factor at each 
evolutionary stage. We have had tribal wars and 
national wars, and now we have a widespread belief 
that international interests are so antagonistic that 
war is unavoidable. Thus we find influential public 
men so saturated with the idea of the necessity of 
war that the national resources are spent enthusias- 
tically in increasing warlike armaments, and speeches 
are made by prominent leaders with the object of 
stirring up the war spirit of the nation. One day 
we are on the eve of war with Russia in China, 
another day we are all but in the death-grips with 
France in the Soudan, and at some future day we 
may find ourselves in conflict with America over 
the Open Door. The doctrine of Adam Smith and 
Richard Cobden is treated as an exploded supersti- 
tion. But the time is coming when its principles 
will be found to have deep international significance. 
What Cobden saw with clear and unerring vision 
was that Free Trade, which, as was seen in the abo- 
lition of the Corn Laws, broke down the monopoly 
of landowners to the advantage of the consumer, 



186 HERBERT SPENCER 

would, when logically developed, break down national 
monopolies in the interest of humanity as such, apart 
from purely national distinctions. And thus, by 
substituting reciprocity of interests for antagonism 
of interests. Free Trade would render huge arma- 
ments as needless between nations as hostile tariffs. 
Free Trade, according to Cobden, was something 
more than a bringer of cheap food to the people : it 
was the application of the moral law to international 
affairs by the simple process of making the interest 
of consumers all over the world to consist in peace- 
ful industry and the free spontaneous exchange of 
the products of their labor for the common good. 
Not only is Cobdenism the practical application to 
industry of the ethics of Christianity from the side 
of economics, but it is also a potent factor in the 
development of humanity on historic lines as inter- 
preted by the Evolution philosophy. The future of 
civilization depends upon the success with which 
statesmen grasp the fact that humanity is drawing 
a stage nearer the realization of the ideal of poets 
and prophets, the ideal of universal felicity through 
comradeship resting on the basis of reciprocity of 
interests. 

Human history, beginning with a sordid struggle 
for existence and an ethical code steeped in blood, 
ends with a harmonious civilization resting upon 
the all-embracing conception of human brotherhood. 



ETHICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 187 

Man and society, no longer at war, are destined to 
form one harmonious whole on the basis of reciprocity 
of service. With the magic wands of Reason, Sci- 
ence, and Industry, man on the basis of an egoism 
which is gradually being transfigured by sympathy, 
will yet lay the foundation of a new social order, in 
which peace, not strife, shall reign. Above the din 
of conflicting interests and warring passions may be 
heard, by those who listen in the spirit of evolution- 
ary science, the inspiring tones of the humanitarian 
evangel — Peace on earth, and good will among men. 
To those who have been accustomed to look at 
man and society from the old point of view, this 
theory of ethical development will be sufficiently 
startling. But if the Spencerian theory is true, 
there is no escape from the conclusion that morality 
is a natural product of social evolution. It is the 
consequence rather than the cause of progress. No 
doubt as society advances the effect in turn becomes 
a cause. In a higher state of civilization morality 
is pursued as its own end. Like art and knowledge, 
morality becomes detached from utility, and is pur- 
sued for its own sake. From the realities of life 
ideals emerge. The artistic genius, enamoured of 
his ideals, pursues them without regard to immediate 
utility. The philosopher, consumed with a passion 
for knowledge, sets at naught the attractions of the 
market-place : he follows Truth though the heavens 



188 HERBERT SPENCER 

fall. So, too, with the devotee of goodness. His 
mind responds intuitively to high and noble deeds, 
and his soul quivers with a subdued delight at the 
thought of virtue. In him the experiences of the 
race have become organic instincts ; he thinks not of 
happiness — he soars into the ampler air of virtue. 
The good man is not good because of the connection 
between happiness and goodness ; he is good because, 
thanks to the triumph of morality in the long ances- 
tral past, his whole being is responsive to disinter- 
ested motives, and thrills with altruistic fervor. 
Such men increase the social fund of morality, and 
become in their turn potent causes in social develop- 
ment. In our devotion to general causes, let us not 
forget the part played in evolution by those rare 
souls who, by the purity of their lives and the 
magnetism of their natures, tune the souls of their 
fellows to noble issues. As I have expressed it 
elsewhere, many pleasures and pains are the funda- 
mental elements of life, but they are no more to be 
identified with the ethical fruits of civilization than 
is the rose-bush and its fragrance with the soil at 
its roots. By means of the subtle chemistry of 
Sympathy man purifies the passions of human nature, 
and by pressing them into the service of the ideal 
invests them with an ethical purpose which, when 
incarnated in the moral pioneers of the race, becomes 
fragrant of the divine. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 

What of religion ? Is it also a natural product of 
the great evolutionary process ? Here we enter upon 
a thorny path. The evolutionist who seeks to give 
a natural account of religion has to reckon at the 
outset with the two antagonists with whom he was 
confronted in the ethical arena — the Supernaturalist 
and the Intuitionalist. The Supernaturalist's con- 
ception of religion follows naturally from his con- 
ception of man and his origin. Grant the truth 
of the biblical account of man's creation, probation, 
and fall, and a highly plausible theory is provided of 
man's religious history. In man's original relation 
to the Creator we have an explanation of the reli- 
gious sentiment ; and the fall of man abundantly 
accounts for the existence of evil which, like a 
malevolent being, has ever dogged the footsteps of 
humanity. 

So true does this theory seem to be to human 
experience, that for centuries it did not occur to 
thinkers to doubt the authenticity of the biblical 

189 



190 HERBERT SPENCER 

record. Belief in the record was strengthened 
when the Old Testament was bound up with the 
history and fortunes of the Jews. Spinoza, in this 
as in much else centuries ahead of his time, threw 
doubt upon the biblical record ; and since his day, 
especially within the last fifty years, the attitude 
of thinkers, even within the Church, has undergone 
an entire change. By admitting the presence in 
the Bible of large slices of legendary matter, the 
Higher Critics have knocked away the foundation 
of the orthodox theory of religion. Relegate to the 
region of myth the supernatural creation of man and 
his disobedience, and at once the mind is prepared 
for the reception of the evolution theory of the rise 
of man. Human misery and wretchedness, no longer 
the result of Divine displeasure, become the natural 
consequences of man's unequal contest with his 
environment. Religion, like ethics, is seen to be 
determined by the struggle for existence — is, in 
short, the intellectual and emotional reflection of 
that struggle. 

The Intuitionalists, while admitting the breakdown 
of the supernatural theory, refuse to subscribe to the 
view that the religious sentiment has no immovable 
subjective roots. Many Intuitionalists opposed super- 
naturalism on the ground that it failed to place reli- 
gion on a rational basis. Rejecting the dogmas of 
the fall and original sin, the Intuitionalists of the 



THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 191 

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries fell back upon 
a supposed natural religion. Great as are the differ- 
ences between the Deists of the last century and the 
Theists of to-day as represented by the late Dr. Mar- 
tineau, they agree in holding that man is endowed 
with the capacity of forming enlightened views of 
Deity, and of rising by a process of intuition into a 
knowledge of, and communion with. Deity. In their 
view, supernaturalism as held in the Established 
Churches is a deformation of natural religion. In 
order to free religion from its supernatural corrup- 
tions, Lord Herbert published his famous treatise, in 
which he labored to show that Reason when interro- 
gated on rational principles testified to the univer- 
sality of belief in God, moral worship, and a future 
recompense. These truths, according to Lord Her- 
bert, shone full upon primitive man till obscured by 
the fraud and deception of priests. The same idea 
prompted Locke in his work on The Reasonableness 
of Christianity. Christianity, in so far as it was a 
supernatural system, was simply the republication 
of Natural Religion. " Christianity in this view has 
introduced nothing new ; it only brought the original 
true religion of reason again to light, by removing 
the false additions to it ; but it soon again fell under 
the same fate of superstitious distortion by mysteri- 
ous dogmas." As regards their fundamental posi- 
tions, John Locke and James Martineau were at one. 



192 HERBERT SPENCER 

In the sphere of religion as in philosophy, David 
Hume proved a destructive force. He combated 
the idea of intuitive religious ideas, just as he com- 
bated the belief in intuitive intellectual concep- 
tions. In regard to religion, Hume went beyond 
mere theorizing; he justified his attack upon reli- 
gious Intuitionalism by his work The Natural History 
of Religion. In that work we have a precursor of 
the evolutionary theory as applied to religion. 
According to Hume, religion has its roots not in 
the reason but in the passions. Primitive man was 
not prompted to worship, as the Deists held, by feel- 
ings of gratitude, wonder, awe, aroused by calm con- 
templation of the works of Nature. Hume clearly 
saw that the faculty of contemplation, and the feel- 
ings of gratitude, wonder, and awe, were products 
of a high state of civilization, and could not exist 
in primitive man, who was really at the mercy of 
his passions and his imagination. In that case. 
Monotheism was not the oldest form of religion. 
The monotheistic conception demanded a higher 
type of intellect than early man possessed. Man's 
early religion, according to Hume, was not monothe- 
istic but fetichistic. Ignorance of the forces of 
Nature drove primitive man to personify them, to 
clothe them with his own qualities greatly enlarged. 
In a word, maii_created Godin his own image . 

In the absence of definite knowledge of primitive 



THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 193 

man, Hume's sketch of the origin and development 
of religion is largely speculative ; but his main posi- 
tion, that religion takes its rise in the passions rather 
than the reason, is amply justified by the Evolution 
philosophy. Primitive man vras not religious be- 
cause he was a reasoning contemplative being : he 
was driven to religion through ignorance and fear. 
From one point of view, indeed, religion is just 
another name for primitive man's theory of the 
world and of his relation to it — a theory, observe, 
directly suggested to him by his contest with his 
environment. Just as primitive man's economic, 
political, and ethical ideals were determined by his 
environment, so his religious ideals had a like origin. 
To primitive man the environment was in the main 
hostile. Nature was as unfriendly as neighboring 
tribes. Ignorant of the laws and forces around him, 
primitive man must have lived in terror. How could 
he explain those forces except on the supposition 
that somehow or other they were manifestations 
of intelligences akin to the human, though vastly 
transcending it in power ? What was the attitude 
of primitive man to those overwhelming nature- 
forces ? Clearly the same in kind, though greatly 
differing in degree, as the attitude of man to a 
formidable tribesman, chief, or king, namely, the 
attitude of abject submission showing itself in con- 
duct of a propitiatory kind. Out of this grew all 



194 HERBERT SPENCER 

those rites and ceremonies whose object was to 
ward off the anger and obtain the favor of the 
god. 

How did primitive man conceive of the mysterious 
power or powers which wielded the forces of nature ? 
According to Mr. Spencer the gods were deified an- 
cestors, and the earliest form of the religious senti- 
ment was ancestor-worship. In his admirable little 
book, The Idea of Grod, Mr. John Fiske thus describes 
the Spencerian view of the origin of religion : " It 
was in accordance with this primitive theory of 
things that the earliest form of religious worship 
was developed. In all races of men, so far as can 
be determined, this was the worship of ancestors. 
The other self of the dead chieftain continued after 
death to watch over the interests of the tribe, to 
defend it against the attack of enemies, to reward 
brave warriors, and to punish traitors and cowards. 
His favor must be propitiated with ceremonies like 
those in which a subject does homage to a living 
ruler. If offended by neglect or irreverent treat- 
ment, defeat in battle, damage by flood or fire, 
visitations of famine or pestilence, were inter- 
preted as marks of his anger." Ancestor-worship 
when reduced to its psychological root is found to 
rest upon primitive man's conceptions of a double 
personality. By means of it dreams, swoons, 
trances, are explained. What happens in sleep 



THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 195 

and unconsciousness ? The hypothesis of the other 
self explains the savage's wanderings during sleep, 
and accounts for the presence in his dreams of 
parents, comrades, or enemies known to be dead 
and buried. In swoons and trances the other self 
is believed to be temporarily absent from the body ; 
and at death the soul is believed to have gone to the 
ghost world. It still exercises influence upon its 
old environment — friendly or hostile, according to 
its relations with its former associates. In the case 
of a departed chief two feelings spring up among the 
members of the tribe, — desire to do him honor, and 
a desire to secure his favor. Out of this spring 
sacred places. His tomb grows into a temple, the 
tomb itself becomes an altar upon which provisions 
are placed — a custom which is the germ of religious 
oblations and festivals. Closely connected with this 
are propitiatory sacrifices as a means of securing the 
favor and support of the god in battle. 

By what process does ancestor-worship, with its 
few simple ceremonies, grow into Polytheism and 
Monotheism with their complex institutions, priest- 
hoods, and ritual ? Religious like ethical sentiments 
and ideas are determined by economic necessities and 
political structures. The expansion of the family 
into the tribe, and the tribe into the kingdom, leads 
to an expansion of the religious idea. Here, as in 
the economic and political spheres, war has great 



196 HERBERT SPENCER 

influence in moulding the ideas and sentiments 
of primitive man. In the words of Mr. Spencer: 
" The overrunnings of tribe by tribe and nation by 
nation, which have been everywhere and always 
going on, have necessarily tended to impose one 
cult upon another, not destroying the worship of the 
conquered ; the conquerors bring in their own wor- 
ships — either carrying them on among themselves 
only, or making the conquered join in them." In 
either case the result is a multiplication of deities, 
priests, creeds, and rituals. The monotheistic idea 
does not evolve till one people either by superiority 
triumphs over all rivals, or where circumstances, as 
in the case of the Jews, render the worship of the 
tribal deity of such a fanatical and exclusive nature 
that no amount of military pressure can bring them 
to adopt the religion and worship the gods of the 
conquered. 

One important fact to be noted in the evolution 
of religion is that the characters of the deities are 
also determined by the economic environment of the 
tribe. Where war is viewed as the natural method 
of tribal and national expansion, the deity is repre- 
sented as favoring the warlike sentiments. The 
gods of Militarism demand human sacrifice, take 
delight in scenes of cruelty, authorize — as in the 
Old Testament — the wholesale slaughter of men, 
women, and children. No greater evidence that 



THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 197 

the God of the Jews, and of Christianity, is a prod- 
uct of evolution could be had than the following, 
from Deuteronomy xx. 10-18 : " And if it (the city) 
will make no peace with thee, but will make war 
against thee, then thou shalt besiege it : and when 
the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, 
thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of 
the sword. . . . But of the cities of these people, 
which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an 
inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that 
breatheth; but thou shalt utterly destroy them." 
How true is it that man creates God in his own 
image. 

Highly suggestive is the fact that with the change 
from militarism to industrialism the character of 
the Deity also undergoes a change. Since mankind 
grasped the truth that national prosperity was 
better secured by industry than by war, two im- 
portant results followed : the laws of Nature began 
to be studied, and encouragement was given to the 
industrial virtues, which favored peaceful co-opera- 
tion, as opposed to the militant virtues, which made 
for strife. It was no coincidence that Christianity 
sprang up during a time when the world was at 
peace. The conception of the Deity under the 
figure of a Father filled with love and compassion, 
who showered his gifts alike on the just and the 
unjust, could not possibly have arisen during a time 



198 HERBERT SPENCER 

of tribal or national warfare. It was no coinci- 
dence either that the sweet and winsome gospel of 
Jesus of Nazareth was transformed during the tur- 
moil of the Middle Ages into a gospel of hate, and 
promulgated by means of the thumbscrew, the 
rack, the sword, and the scaffold. Nor is it a 
coincidence that to-day, when the war spirit is 
rampant, the clergy should be declaring that the 
Sermon on the Mount is impracticable, and that the 
powder-cart is a more potent factor in spreading 
civilization than the Cross of Christ. So long as 
nations act upon the belief that the prosperity of 
the one can only be had through the impoverishment 
of others, so long they will view war as a necessary 
factor in civilization, and so long will the clergy 
worship, not the All-Pitiful Father of Jesus Christ, 
but the bellicose tribal deity of the Jews. 

In another way Industrialism strikes at the root 
of supernaturalism — by the rapidity with which 
it seizes and popularizes the conception of law. 
The primitive theory of the Universe rests upon 
the idea of the miraculous. Truth was sought not 
by observation but by divination ; prosperity was 
the result not of industry but of war, tempered 
with faith in the god of battles ; disease was not 
the result of breach of Nature's laws, but of spiritual 
possession. In such an atmosphere Industrialism 
could not possibly thrive; and accordingly we find 



THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 199 

that when man began to turn his attention to 
pacific industry, study of Nature took the place of 
fantastic theorizings about extra-mundane exist- 
ences, and activities which previously were lost in 
the quicksands of superstition were turned in the 
fruitful direction of intellectual progress and social 
amelioration. There is a striking connection between 
the decline of the theological spirit and the rise of 
the humanitarian spirit. In its early days Theology 
embraced in its sweep all phases of human activity 
— Politics, Industry, Art, Science, and Philosophy. 
The result was the stagnation of the human intellect 
and the hardening of the human heart. Even at its 
best the theological ideal as it affects society cannot 
compare with the humanitarian ideal. It is far more 
important, as Diderot has remarked, to work for the 
prevention of misery than to multiply places of 
refuge for the miserable. 

The place hitherto occupied by Theology will 
henceforth be taken by Science. The religious sen- 
timents will no longer be under the guidance of a 
theory of life which, under all its transformations, is 
identical at root with the ancestor- worship of primi- 
tive man. Science will increase rather than dimin- 
ish the feelings of wonder, awe, and humility which 
are the real roots of religious feeling, and so long 
as this is the case, man need not fear that with the 
decay of Theology a blight will fall upon the earth. 



200 HERBERT SPENCER 

The religious sentiment, so long distorted by The- 
ology, is made up of two distinct feelings — a feeling 
of relationship with Nature as expressed by Words- 
worth, which the Evolution philosophy has greatly 
intensified, and a deep sense of the unity, trust- 
worthiness, and beneficence of the great cosmic 
forces. Now as of old it is true that underneath 
the righteous are the everlasting arms. 



CHAPTER Xn 

THE PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT OF SPENCERISM 

So far, the Spencerian theory has been presented 
on the purely scientific side as a philosophy of the 
Cosmos. In dealing with the knowable, Mr. Spen- 
cer's great aim has been to frame into one all-compre- 
hensive generalization the separate generalizations 
of Science ; in other words, to trace from star to 
soul the working of one universal evolutionary pro- 
cess, scientifically interpretable in terms of Force. 
For purposes of convenience, phenomena are divided 
into astronomic, geologic, biologic, psychologic, and 
sociologic, but through these divisions one process 
holds sway. While the Cosmos as a whole is evolv- 
ing from simplicity to complexity, by successive 
integrations and differentiations, the parts are also 
subject to the same law of evolution. " So under- 
stood," says Mr. Spencer, "evolution becomes not 
one in principle only, but in fact." But man is not 
satisfied with positive knowledge. For practical 
purposes science suffices, but no sooner has the 
philosophic mind brought phenomena within the 
sweep of mechanical explanations, than it discovers 

201 



202 HERBERT SPENCER 

that Force, wliicli is the last word of science, is far 
from being the last word of philosophy. To the 
philosopher, Force is but a symbol ; atoms and 
energies have only relative validity. What is the 
nature of that Reality of which Force is a symbol? 
The Spencerian answer to that question in no way 
affects the great evolutionary generalization as ex- 
pounded in previous chapters. As remarked in an 
earlier portion of this book, " Spencerism stands on 
its merits as the philosophy of the knowable, and 
the only organized body of thought which has its 
roots in experience, and is a guide to the under- 
standing of life theoretically and practically." 

Apart from practical life, science has great 
intellectual and emotional bearings. Deeper than 
purely mechanical interpretations of Nature lie 
fundamental questions of thought and being. So 
long as man is endowed with intelligence, he 
will never cease from attempts to solve the 
great Sphinx riddle of existence. Generation after 
generation of storm-tossed thinkers have sighed 
in vain for a glimpse of the haven of intellec- 
tual and emotional rest. Oppressed by a sense of 
the unfathomable niystery of life, deeply reflective 
natures, with Job-like sadness, have been prostrated 
in the dust by a feeling of mental helplessness and 
moral perplexity. Undismayed by the failure of 
philosophers and religionists from Plato to Hegel, 



PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT 203 

and from Job to Newman, men to-day are as busy as 
ever in their attempts to find an answer to the riddle 
of the Sphinx. Behind phenomena with their fleet- 
ingness, is there a permanent Power, and, if so, can 
we discover its nature ? Can we ascribe to it per- 
sonality ? Can science, as interpreted by philosophy, 
throw some light upon the great and fundamental 
question of purpose ? Have the vast cosmical trans- 
formations which science reveals a definite signifi- 
cance ? Is humanity, in the words of Mr. Fiske, a 
mere local incident in an endless series of aimless 
cosmical changes ? What answer has the Spencerian 
philosophy to give to these questions? In philos- 
ophy as in science the starting-point of inquiry is 
self-consciousness. The evolution of consciousness 
has been traced by Mr. Spencer from its earliest 
dim manifestations in animal life to its highest 
manifestations as cultured intelligence. Here the 
task of the scientific evolutionist ends ; but the 
philosophic evolutionist must proceed further ; he 
has to determine, if possible, the nature and limits 
of intelligence. Is the mind of man rigidly con- 
fined to the world of positive verifiable fact, or 
does it possess capacities which link it to an extra- 
mundane existence ? 

Philosophy is rooted in Psychology. The central 
question upon which all other questions rest is this : 
What is the nature of Knowledge? Upon Episte- 



204 HERBERT SPENCER 

mology rest Cosmology and Ontology. It is useless 
to endeavor to discover the real significance of 
the World and Being until we discover the nature 
and limits of Knowledge. In differences of psycho- 
logical theory, all differences among philosophers 
take their rise. What, then, is Mr. Spencer's 
psychological theory viewed from the standpoint 
of philosophy ? The answer to the questions : How 
do we know ? How does Knowledge develop ? has 
already been given in the chapter dealing with the 
Evolution of Mind. The question now is : What 
is the nature and limitation of Knowledge ? The 
answer to this is involved in the reply to this further 
question : What do we know ? To this the Spence- 
rian reply is : We know things in their relations. 
This view is summed up in the phrase Relativity of 
Knowledge. Even since Hume, with his rigorous and 
somewhat sceptical analysis of mind, the idea of the 
relativity of human knowledge has held an important 
place in philosophical discussions. Kant, whose aim 
was to overthrow Hume's Empiricism, placed the 
doctrine of Relativity in a stronger position than 
ever by his artificial theory of the categories of 
knowledge. In his famous essay, Sir William Hamil- 
ton made the relativity of knowledge the basis of 
his attack on the Absolute of German philosophers. 
"We think in relation," said Hamilton, "and there- 
fore by the very nature of the mind we are debarred 



PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT 205 

from knowledge of the unrelated, the Absolute." 
Mr. Spencer has elaborated and strengthened the 
Hamiltonian position by a careful analysis of the 
nature and the development of intelligence. If, as 
Mr. Spencer shows, all knowledge is classifying, 
obviously our knowledge of one thing is impossible, 
except through all knowledge of other things. " A 
thing is perfectly known only when it is in all 
respects like certain things previously observed ; 
that in proportion to the number of respects in 
which it is unlike them is the extent to which it is 
unknown ; and that hence, when it has absolutely 
no attribute in common with anything else, it must 
be absolutely beyond the bounds of knowledge." 

The doctrine of Relativity is so abundantly in 
harmony with science, that it might be left to stand 
without further elaboration, were it not that it has 
been vigorously attacked in recent years by the 
Hegelian school of philosophers. Instead of dwell- 
ing, with Mr. Spencer, on the inherent relativity of 
intelligence, it may be desirable to look at the sub- 
ject from a different point of view. Not only do we 
think in relation, but Nature itself is one huge mass 
of relativity. In dealing with Nature, we deal not 
with inherent substances but with bundles of rela- 
tions. The impression which the observer first forms 
of Nature is, that it is composed of numerous in- 
dependent passive substances which are energized 



206 HERBERT SPENCER 

by independent forces. Of the actual existence of 
Matter as an independent substance, the observer 
entertains no doubt. Matter is supposed to exist in 
three forms, — solid, liquid, and gaseous, — each with 
its different properties, to which the individuality 
of objects is supposed to be due. The atomic theory 
is based upon the idea of Matter as made up of sub- 
stances incomprehensively small, to whose properties 
and combinations the complexity of the Cosmos is 
due. Let us examine the so-called properties of 
atoms. That hardness is a property of the atom is 
not doubted by the man of science. But what is 
hardness ? It is not a property at all — it is a rela- 
tion. Hardness is simply the measure of the "resist- 
ance offered to the separation of molecules from one 
another." Obviously, there is no sense in talking 
of hardness in a single atom. Again, we cannot 
conceive of atoms apart from color of some kind. 
But what is color? Is it a property of matter? 
Color is not a property of matter ; it is due to cer- 
tain vibratory motions in the atoms, and is related 
to the rate of energy. If all substances were at 
absolute zero in temperature, there would be no 
vibratory motions, and consequently no color. Sub- 
stance itself would be invisible. The same holds 
good of inertia, mass, heat, — the primary as well 
as the secondary properties, — which are no longer 
viewed as properties but as conditions of matter. 



PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT 207 

Matter is not a thing but a state, and except in 
relation has no existence. No force in Nature can 
be isolated from other forces. As has been said, 
"What we call solids, liquids, and gases, with all 
the laws that belong to each of them, are simply the 
relations of heat-energy to groups of atoms, not the 
properties or laws that may be asserted of atoms as 
such." Nature resolves itself into a scene of un- 
varying activity, and what appear to us to be dis- 
tinct existences, isolated and independent, are really 
relative conditions of that activity. For this view 
of Nature we are indebted to the theory of the con- 
servation and transformation of Forces — which on 
the philosophic side rests on the view that Nature 
is not an assemblage of existences, but a bundle of 
forces whose existences are known to us by the 
relative states in which they manifest themselves. 
Helmholtz expresses the dynamic conception of Na- 
ture when he says, " Every property or quality of a 
thing is in reality nothing but its capability of pro- 
ducing certain effects on other things." Stallo, in 
his book Concepts of Modern Science^ sums up the 
new view which has emerged from the doctrine of 
the conservation and transformation of Forces as 
follows : " The real existence of things is co-extensive 
with their qualitative and quantitative determina- 
tions, and both are in their nature relations, quality 
resulting from mutual action, and quantity being 



208 HERBERT SPENCER 

simply a ratio between terms neither of which is 
absolute. Every objectively real thing is thus a 
term in a numberless series of mutual implications, 
and forms of reality beyond these implications are 
as unknown to experience as to thought. There is 
no absolute material quality, no absolute material 
substance, no absolutely physical unit, no absolutely 
simple physical entity, no absolute physical constant, 
no absolute standard, either of quantity or quality. 
There is no form of material existence which is either 
its own support or its own measure, and which abides 
either quantitatively or qualitatively otherwise than 
in perpetual change in an unceasing flow of muta- 
tions." And thus what Mr. Spencer finds to be true 
of mind, that it works on the principle of Relativity, 
science also finds to be true of the Cosmos, where 
Relativity reigns supreme. 

How do the Hegelians get their Absolute ? They 
quarrelled with Hamilton for making the Absolute 
equivalent to pure identity, an abstraction of the 
intellect, an absolute unit which the Hegelians have 
no difficulty in showing cannot possibly exist. The 
quarrel of the Hegelians with Hamilton and Spencer 
is that they identify the Absolute with something 
out of relation, and then declare that the Absolute 
is unknowable because they have placed it outside 
the arena of knowledge. The Absolute as the nega- 
tion of all relation is an absurdity — it cannot be 



PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT 209 

known, because if it exists it exists out of relation 
to thought. How, then, do the Hegelians conceive 
the Absolute ? Not as the negation of relations, but 
as the unification of relations. With Hegel the 
Absolute is not a barren identity, a sterile unity, 
but a unity reached through differences. The Abso- 
lute, according to Hegel, is an identity which 
manifests itself through distinctions. Now what, 
after all, is Hegel's Absolute but simply another 
name for the totality of cosmic relations? Hegel 
does not place the Absolute on one side and the 
Relative on the other. Viewing the Universe as a 
whole, and combining in thought process and prod- 
uct, he calls the result the Absolute. His system 
rests upon the relativity of thought and being, but 
by laying hold of the ideas of reciprocity and devel- 
opment, and looking at the process in its totality, 
Hegel makes Nature an absolute unity manifesting 
itself in perpetual differences. Hegel's system dif- 
fers from Materialism simply in making logic instead 
of matter, the idea instead of the atom, the starting- 
point. Strip Hegelism of its misty phraseology, and 
its Absolute is no other than the Relative with its 
roots in human experience and human thought. As 
against Hamilton's notion of the Absolute, Hegel's 
polemic was highly effective; but reduced to its 
ultimate analysis, his Absolute differs in no essen- 
tial from Spencer's doctrine of Relativity. Where 



210 HERBERT SPENCER 

Spencer contents himself with tracing the evolution 
and defining the limits of self-consciousness, Hegel 
deifies the logical process and calls it God. 

If, then, we can only know things in their rela- 
tions, the question immediately emerges — What do 
we know of things? How does the world stand 
related to our consciousness ? Is the material world 
really what it seems? A partial answer has been 
given by the insight which is obtained of the Uni- 
verse when discussing the relativity of knowledge. 
The world is not what it seems, an assemblage of 
independent things composed of substances with 
their respective properties. The multiform energies 
of Nature are reducible to one form of activity protean 
in its manifestations. The phenomena of Nature 
are due not to the combined action of numerous 
agents endowed with substance and acted upon by 
powers, but to the ceaseless transformations of Force 
or Energy. As James Hinton expresses it in one of 
his suggestive chapters on Nature : " We are obliged 
to think of the forces as one, because, in fact, they 
will not remain distinct. We cannot practically 
isolate any one of them, except for some special and 
temporary purpose : it is constantly escaping from us 
and passing off into other forms. Motion resolves 
itself in sound and heat ; heat flies off in motion, in 
chemical or electric change ; electricity is lost in 
sparks of light, in magnetism, in mechanical disrup- 



PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT 211 

tions, in the production of chemical power ; chemical 
power no sooner acts than it is no more chemical, 
and must be recognized in explosions, in electric 
currents, in heat. No force can be permanently 
retained ; if we need to preserve any one, we must 
perpetually generate it afresh. Nor can we isolate 
any of the forces from the rest in our thought of 
Nature, any more than in our operations upon her. 
To do so would be for the intellect to choose un- 
reason ; to create disorder where order reigns. We 
should be perpetually losing our force without rea- 
son, and finding it reappear without necessity. We 
can only follow one, by recognizing the essential 
sameness of them all. . . . Owing to the limited 
capacity of our senses, which only perceive a few of 
the multitudinous processes which are really taking 
place in Nature, we continually lose the chain of her 
operations. Its links are ever passing out of the 
sphere of our perception ; and, reappearing at a dis- 
tant spot or point of time, they produce on us the 
impression of original and disconnected actions. 
From this cause — from this imperfection of our 
senses — arose the false conception of the various 
forces as distinct existences or causes ; from this 
cause it was that that false conception so long 
maintained its sway. If our sense had been pene- 
trating enough to follow the entire course of Nature's 
action, and to recognize it in every shape, that 



212 HERBERT SPENCER 

thought never could have arisen. And thus it is 
that reason sets it aside, by supplementing sense, 
and teaching us to recognize the existence of that 
which we cannot see. By tracing the strict chain of 
causation throughout Nature, it substitutes unvary- 
ing activity for imaginary agents. . . . Nor can 
we better picture the activity of Nature to our minds 
than by conceiving it as a vast, even a limitless, 
multitude of vibrations — a rush and whirl, a maze, 
of actions to and fro ; shifting their place, changing 
their mode, yielding to each other, modified and 
altered in endless ways ; ceasing and recommencing 
in every quarter, with nothing constant but that 
the exactness of the balance be maintained." 

Is the conception of Force as the fundamental 
fact of the Universe philosophically satisfying? 
Many critics have assumed that Mr. Spencer is 
a Materialist because his system is founded upon 
the persistence of Force, overlooking the fact that 
Mr. Spencer, when viewing the Cosmos from the 
side of philosophy, distinctly states that Force is 
not the ultimate Reality, but simply the symbol 
of that Reality. To make Force the ultimate 
Reality would be to do violence to the principle 
of relativity, which forbids the reduction of the 
Universe to a unit. Unity and duality are relative 
conceptions, and therefore all materialistic theories, 
whether resting upon a static or dynamic concep- 



PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT 213 

tion, — the Atomic theoiy or the theory of Energy, 
— are ruled out of court. Mr. Spencer's theory of 
the world grows naturally and logically out of his 
Psychology. True to his doctrine of the relativity 
of knowledge, Mr. Spencer recognizes that Force, 
though a scientific ultimate, has only a relative 
value as a philosophic explanation, inasmuch as the 
idea of Force is derived from our muscular activity. 
On this point he is quite explicit. In First Prin- 
ciples^ at the conclusion of the chapter, " The Per- 
sistence of Force," Mr. Spencer says : " But, now, 
what is the force of which we predicate persistence ? 
It is not the force we are immediately conscious of 
in our own muscular efforts, for this does not persist. 
. . . By the persistence of Force, we really mean 
the persistence of some Cause which transcends our 
knowledge and conception. In asserting it we 
assert an Unconditioned Reality, without beginning 
or end." Similarly, in the concluding chapter, Mr. 
Spencer states his position thus : " Over and over 
again it has been shown, in various ways, that the 
deepest truths we can reach are simply statements 
of the widest uniformities in our experience of the 
relations of Matter, Motion, and Force — are but 
symbols of the unknown Reality. A power of which 
the nature remains forever inconceivable, and to 
which no limits in time or space can be imagined, 
works in us certain effects. . . . The interpretation 



214 HERBERT SPENCER 

of all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and 
Force is nothing more than the reduction of our 
complex symbols of thought to the simplest symbols ; 
and when the equation has been brought to its lowest 
terms, the symbols remain symbols still." What com- 
pels us to treat Force, not as the ultimate Reality, 
but as a symbol ? The theory of the relativity of 
knowledge. In the words of James Hinton : "What- 
ever be that secret activity in Nature of which all 
the ' forces ' are exhibitions to our senses, we know 
one thing respecting it, namely, that it is not force. 
Force is a sensation of our own, and is no more to be 
attributed to the objects in connection with which 
we feel it than are the brightness of a color or the 
sweetness of a taste. . . . The feeling from which 
we derive the idea of force rests upon a conscious- 
ness of difficulty, of opposition, of imperfect ability. 
It arises from resisted effort. In fact, it is our own 
imperfection we ascribe to Nature when we imagine 
that our feeling of force truly represents its working." 
The Spencerian philosophical attitude to the great 
problem is summed up in the concluding words of 
his " Ecclesiastical Institutions " : " But one truth 
must grow ever clearer — the truth that there is an 
Inscrutable Existence everywhere manifested, to 
which we can neither find nor conceive beginning or 
end. Amid the mysteries which become the more 
mysterious the more they are thought about, there 



PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT 215 

will remain the one absolute certainty that he [the 
philosopher] is ever in presence of an Infinite and 
Eternal Energy from which all things proceed." 
Thus the Spencerian philosophy shades into religion, 
and finds expression in the note of interrogation of 
Zophar, the Naamathite, the friend of Job : " Canst 
thou by searching find out God ? Canst thou find 
out the Almighty unto perfection ? " 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF SPENCERISM 

That the negative attitude of the Spencerian. 
philosophy towards religion should give great dis- 
satisfaction was only what was to be expected. 
The human mind is not easily reconciled to an 
attitude of suspense. Theologians challenged the 
views of Mr. Spencer on historical and religious 
grounds. They dissented from his evolutionary 
sketch of religion as originating in ancestor-worship, 
and they repudiated his conclusion that man's re- 
ligious conceptions and aspirations are ineffective 
attempts to solve the insoluble, and have no objec- 
tive validity. Idealistic philosophers, on the other 
hand, combated Spencerism on the ground that 
his religious negativism had its root in a defective 
psychology. If mind is chained to experience, if 
the senses are the only inlets of knowledge, there 
can be no pathway to the supernatural except by 
miraculous interposition, of which Idealistic philoso- 
phers are not enamoured. Clearly, if the super- 
natural was to be saved from the blight of nega- 

216 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT 217 

tivity, it could only be by a new analysis of the 
mind in order to discover principles transcending 
experience. Of course, by this method, Christianity 
as a revealed religion could not hope to be vindicated. 
Indeed, the Idealist philosophers had no wish to 
come to the rescue of the religion of the churches. 
Hegelians, as a school, have turned their backs upon 
popular supernaturalism. Their aim rather has been 
to give a philosophical basis to Theism as opposed 
to Agnosticism. 

The position of the Idealist has been stated thus : 
"There is something more in the world of experi- 
ence than a mere succession of sense-data. Sense- 
experience sets the mind to working on its own 
account and causes it to deliver itself of truths 
which are not contained in any of our actual experi- 
ences or in all of them together, but which extend 
over a wider ground than experience can possibly 
cover." The theory of innate ideas is no longer 
held. The new view rather is that the mind is 
possessed of innate capacities, the power of assimi- 
lating and interpreting sense-data. Consciousness, 
say the Idealists, cannot at once be the product and 
the interpreter of experience. Self-consciousness, 
according to the Neo-Kantians, is impossible except 
on the assumption that in the mind there exists a 
unifying spiritual principle which, so to speak, sits 
at the loom of Time and weaves the isolated unre- 



218 HERBERT SPENCER 

lated threads of experience into an organized cohe- 
rent whole. 

Have we not here an illustration of the tendency 
of the mind to which attention has already been 
called — that of personifying the processes of Nature, 
of converting the final product into an initial, all- 
controlling agent? Just as Idealistic biologists 
explained life-processes by means of an entity 
called the Vital Force, so Idealistic psychologists 
postulate an entity called the Self-conscious Prin- 
ciple as the primary agent in converting sense-data 
into Knowledge. These philosophers fall into their 
mistake through neglect of the great fact of rela- 
tivity upon which Nature and Consciousness alike 
depend. They assume that Mind and Matter exist 
as separate independent entities, whereas they are 
simply relative existences. The one apart from 
the other is unthinkable. We know nothing of Mind 
apart from Matter, and nothing of Matter apart 
from Mind. As Professor Seth Pringle-Pattison 
has admirably pointed out : "The ultimate fact of 
knowledge is neither pure subject nor pure object, 
neither a mere sense nor a mere ego, but an ego or 
subject conscious of sensations. It is not a mere 
unity, but a unity in duality." For purposes of 
analysis philosophers distinguish between the sub- 
ject and the object, but when they forget that the 
distinction is purely logical, and has no counterpart 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT 219 

in Nature, when, in a word, they treat a logical 
abstraction as a concrete reality, they are guilty of 
the scholastic error of constructing the world out 
of universals. This is exactly the error into which 
Professor Green fell. Proceeding on the assumption 
that consciousness is not the result of the action and 
interaction of matter and mind, but is the work of 
a single spiritual principle. Professor Green bridges 
the gulf which separates the human and the divine 
by identifying this " Spiritual Principle " with the 
universal or divine self-consciousness. In his hands 
human consciousness, which he elevated to the rank 
of an entity, becomes a reproduction in the human 
organism of the eternal complete self-consciousness. 
Thus at one stroke the process of knowledge in the 
mind is transformed into an agent. By personify- 
ing knowledge Professor Green reaches the concep- 
tion of an eternal Knower who sustains the world, 
and who reproduces himself in the mind of man. 

Let us see to what this attempt to secure a The- 
istic ground for the universe leads. What support 
does religion get from the Neo-Kantian and Hege- 
lian attempts to identify human consciousness with 
an eternal complete self-consciousness ? " From a 
world of spirits to a supreme Spirit," says Professor 
Ward, "is a possible step." On this line of advance. 
Idealists like Green and Ward hope to secure a basis 
for Natural Theology. The great difficulty which 



220 HERBERT SPENCER 

faces Idealism is the problem of personality. The 
basis of the system is the identity of the human 
and the divine self-consciousness. Now human self- 
consciousness is the product of two factors, the Ego 
and the Non-Ego. We cannot think of self-con- 
sciousness as a unity ; it is a unity in duality. It 
manifests itself through a constant reduction of 
differences to identity. Can we conceive of a divine 
self-consciousness working by analogous methods? 
Manifestly, if the two forms of self-consciousness 
are the same in kind, if the human is a reproduction 
of the divine, God must be, like man, a thinking, 
feeling, progressive Intelligence. Hegel saw this 
difficulty, and boldly represented Deity as the 
product of evolution! Lotze, who opposed Hegel- 
ism, approached the problem from another point, 
but when he came to deal with the question of 
divine personality, he was intellectually stranded. 
Deal with generalities after the fashion of Green 
and Ward, claim a monopoly of intellectual haziness, 
and antagonistic views can live in the mind comfort- 
ably enough together, but bring them into the day- 
light of analysis, and the unity of Idealistic Theism 
is seen to be the unity of a landscape in a fog. How 
true this is may be seen by the shifts to which Lotze 
is driven to render intelligible his conception of a 
divine personality. In his History of Modern Phi- 
losophy^ Dr. Hoffding thus discusses the theistic 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT 221 

position of Lotze : " Lotze conceives the world-prin- 
ciple as an Absolute Personality, and he defends the 
transference of the concept of personality to the 
Absolute Being as follows : The Absolute Being 
must be personal, because personality alone pos- 
sesses inner independence and originality, while the 
concept of personality only finds imperfect realiza- 
tion in finite beings who are dependent on external 
conditions. Lotze, it is true, admits that a personal 
life involves resistance to be overcome and the fac- 
ulty of suffering and receiving as well as of working. 
But if it is asked. How can an Absolute Being, sub- 
ject to no limitations, suffer? Lotze answers that 
the feeling of the Deity must be set in motion by 
the inner happenings of its own creative imagina- 
tion ! But it is a great question whether such a 
self-created opposition can have any serious signifi- 
cance, especially since it can at any moment be 
destroyed at will. Personalities, as we know them, 
at least have to fight against barriers which are 
neither self-created nor easily set aside ; the anal- 
ogy on which Lotze builds, therefore, seems to break 
down at the critical point. Moreover, according to 
the most probable interpretation of his confused and 
hesitating utterances on the subject, Lotze diverges 
from Weisse in holding that the form of time is not 
applicable to the Absolute Being ; a personal being 
which does not develop in time, a timeless life and a 



222 HERBERT SPENCER 

timeless suffering and working — these are concepts 
whicli make too great demands on our power of draw- 
ing analogies ! " 

The attempt to rise from the human self -con- 
sciousness to a divine self-consciousness by means 
of the principle of psychological identity lands us in 
bewildering contradictions. Abolish the idea of an 
environment and you abolish the exciting cause 
of man's psychical nature — his reason, his feelings, 
his will. But for God the Uncreated, the Eternal, 
there can be no environment, and consequently there 
can be no need for what is understood by reason, 
feeling, and will, which are all marks of imperfec- 
tion, and have their root in biological phenomena. 
God the all-Perfect, the all-Knowing, cannot be con- 
ceived as reaching knowledge through a process 
of reasoning, and as little can He be conceived 
as loving and sorrowing, which are distinctive 
marks of finiteness. Considerations such as these 
led Spinoza to empty his conception of Deity of all 
anthropomorphic qualities. In his view, to make 
the term " God " embrace the conception of a mag- 
nified human personality, and of the Uncreated, the 
Related, the Eternal One, was as illogical as to em- 
brace under the term " dog " the barking animal of 
that name and the dog-star, Sirius. 

The same considerations led Mr. Spencer, in defin- 
ing his philosophical attitude towards Theism, to 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT 223 

write as follows : " To believe in a divine con- 
sciousness men must refrain from thinking what is 
meant by consciousness — must stop short with verbal 
propositions ; and propositions which they are de- 
barred from rendering into thoughts will more and 
more fail to satisfy them. Of course like difficulties 
present themselves when the will of God is spoken 
of. So long as we refrain from giving a definite 
meaning to the word will, we may say that it is 
possessed by the Cause of All Things as readily as 
we may say that love of approbation is possessed 
by a circle ; but when from the words we pass to 
the thoughts they stand for, we find that we can 
no more unite in consciousness the terms of the one 
proposition than we can those of the other. Who- 
ever conceives any other will than his own must do 
so in terms of his own will, which is the sole will 
directly known to him, all other wills being only 
inferred. But will, as each is conscious of it, pre- 
supposes a motive, a prompting desire of some kind. 
Absolute indifference excludes the conception of will. 
Moreover will, as implying a prompting desire, con- 
notes some end contemplated as one to be achieved, 
and ceases with the achievement of it ; some other 
will referring to some other end taking its place. 
That is to say, will like emotion necessarily supposes 
a series of states of consciousness. The conception 
of a divine will, derived from that of the human 



224 HERBERT SPENCER 

will, involves, like it, localization in space and time. 
The willing of each end excludes from consciousness 
for an interval the willing of other ends ; and there- 
fore is inconsistent with that omnipresent activity 
which simultaneously works out an infinity of ends. 
It is the same with the ascription of intelligence. 
Not to dwell on the seriality and limitation implied 
as before, we may note that intelligence, as alone 
conceivable by us, presupposes existences indepen- 
dent of it and objective to it. It is carried on in 
terms of changes primarily wrought by alien activi- 
ties — the impressions generated by things beyond 
consciousness, and the ideas derived from such im- 
pressions. To speak of an intelligence which exists 
in the absence of all such alien activities, is to use a 
meaningless word. If to the corollary that the First 
Cause, considered as intelligent, must be continually 
affected by independent objective activities, it is 
replied that these have become such by act of crea- 
tion, and were previously included in the First 
Cause, then the reply is that in such case the First 
Cause could, before this creation, have had nothing 
to generate in it such changes as those constituting 
what we call intelligence, and must therefore have 
been unintelligent at the time when intelligence 
was most called for. Hence it is clear that the 
intelligence ascribed, answers in no respect to that 
which we know by the name. It is intelligence 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT 225 

out of which all the characters constituting it have 
vanished." 

Suppose we accept as valid the Idealistic con- 
ception of a supreme self-conscious principle as 
the ground of existence, the question arises as to 
the relation to it of the human self-consciousness. 
Consciousness in man, according to Idealism, is the 
highest form in which existence appears. Apart 
from the Supreme Spiritual Principle, man has no 
existence. He is the incarnation under imperfect 
physical conditions of the Supreme Principle. What 
guarantee is there that this physically conditioned 
consciousness will exist as an entity after the break-up 
of material conditions? There is no more guar- 
antee in the case of Idealism than in the case of 
Materialism. No thinker of any note now defends 
Materialism. Sun worship, indeed, is a more digni- 
fied attitude towards the Cosmos than atom worship, 
and prostration before the soul of the Universe is 
more creditable to the savage than deification of 
ether. To what were vagaries of materialistic 
scientists due? They were due to the neglect, 
common to men of science, of philosophic thinking. 
Materialists were entirely unaware of the fact that 
not one step can be taken in scientific generalization 
without the aid of certain all-embracing categories 
of thought. Philosophy has got past the stage of 
viewing the Universe as made up of an infinite 

Q 



226 HERBERT SPENCER 

number of isolated particulars, or even as the out- 
come of one material force. To the highest philos- 
ophy of the day, the Universe is an organic unity. 
According to Idealism this cannot be mechanical. 
It can only be likened to one thing — the spiritual 
principle in man. For all practical purposes, how- 
ever, it signifies little whether mind is the temporary 
embodiment of a Spiritual Principle or a specialized 
form of Matter. In either case man is a bubble 
on the great stream of time. We may discourse of 
the bubble in the language of poetry or of science ; 
the result is the same — absorption in the universal. 
Idealism equally with Materialism leaves man a 
prisoner in the hands of necessity. The only dif- 
ference is that while Materialism puts round the 
prisoner's neck a plain unpretentious noose, Idealism 
adds fringes and embroidery. Materialism in plain 
blunt language passes sentence of death, while Ideal- 
ism indulges in a poetic funeral oration. 

The conclusion that Idealism affords no resting- 
place for the religious instincts and aspirations of 
man is forcing itself upon the more thoughtful of 
orthodox theologians. Thus we find Professor 
Iverach in a review of the late Principal Caird's 
last work, writing as follows : " Idealism starts 
from the self, and strives to interpret the experience 
of the self. Our thought constitutes the world we 
know and live in. It exists for us in thinkable 



■r.xnw.MIUi.i.i|-U. ■■MIJIIMIIULl,' 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT 227 

relations, and it is easy to prove this, as is done in 
the book before us, that "this constant amidst the 
variable, not given by them but above them, is 
something which sense does not and cannot provide 
— is, and can only be, the self-conscious, spiritual 
self, the unifying, constitutive power of thought. 
From the self-conscious, spiritual self, idealism 
swiftly proceeds on its way to the conclusion that 
as for the world in which this self-conscious self 
lives and moves the self is necessary, so for the 
universe of things and persons an absolute self- 
consciousness, a constitutive power of thought, is 
necessary. As the objective world of the self is 
in relation to the self, so the universe is the objec- 
tive of the absolute self. If the world is cast into 
the life of God, if the world is regarded as the other 
of God, one may strive as he may, but he cannot 
avoid the path which leads swiftly to pantheism." 

Conscious of the weakness of Idealism, other 
expounders of Theism, such as Professor Eraser, the 
well-known editor of Berkeley, attack the problem 
from another point of view. In Professor Eraser's 
Gifford lectures there are no sleight of hand methods 
of the Hegelian type. The difficulties in the way of 
Theism are fairly faced. The Professor covers a 
large piece of historical and critical ground, in 
which he deals with Hume, Spinoza, Hegel, Spencer. 
Against all the arguments drawn from philosophy 



228 HERBERT SPENCER 

and from contemplation of the evils of life, the Pro- 
fessor puts faith in the goodness and omnipotence of 
God — a position he takes up as the only way to give 
a rational meaning to life, and to ward off pessimistic 
despair. When we come to analyze the Professor's 
reasoning and study his results critically, we are sur- 
prised at the slender foundations upon which his 
Theistic structure rests. When the average man 
thinks of God, he thinks of Him as a Person who 
can be moved by appeals, and who possesses in infi- 
nite degree the best qualities of the best men. This 
conception of Deity lies at the root of the belief in 
miracles and revelation. Take away, or render pale 
and shadowy, the idea of personality, or tie the hands 
of Deity with the ropes of physical necessity and in- 
variability of law, and at once the average man ceases 
to be interested in Theism, and hands it over to the 
philosopher. If Professor Eraser wishes to give vital- 
ity to Theism, he must bring into relief the idea of 
personality. If the God of philosophic thought is 
not personal in the understood sense of the term, phil- 
osophic Theism comes perilously near Agnosticism. 
Let us listen to Professor Eraser on this decisive 
point of personality : " The ' personality ' of God 
need not mean that the Being adumbrated in Nature 
and Man is embodied and individual self-conscious life, 
like the human — that God is organized and extended, 
as man now is — or omnipresent as in sensuous imagi- 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT 229 

nation ; or that God has a conscious experience, that 
is subject like ours to cliange of conscious state. . . . 
Personality in man, moreover, implies memory; but 
we are not bound to suppose that the religious con- 
ception of the universe implies memory in the Per- 
fect Person with whom all experience brings us 
into constant intercourse. Also a human intelli- 
gence of the world involves reasoning, on the part 
of human persons ; but it does not follow that the 
Perfect Person who speaks to us in the universe of 
Nature and Man must be conscious of deducing con- 
clusions from premises, or of generalizing under con- 
ditions of inductive calculation. The 'personality 
of God ' is a formula which implies that, in relation to 
us — or at the human point of view — the Universal 
Power, manifested in nature and in man, must be 
regarded at last ethically, not physically — therefore 
as an imperfectly conceived Person, not as an imper- 
fectly conceived Thing." After all, we do not get 
much beyond the conclusions reached by David Hume 
and Herbert Spencer. In his dialogues on religion, 
Hume admits that in the agency discoverable in the 
world we trace the operation of qualities akin to 
those we know as human. Spencer, too, admits 
that the Power of which all phenomena are mani- 
festations may be more readily conceived under 
mental than material symbols. With Hume and 
Spencer, Professor Eraser admits the impossibility of 



230 HERBERT SPENCER 

finding God by tlie cognitive process, and stumbles 
at the difficulties of reconciling the existence of evil 
with, divine personality. What is the note which 
differentiates this view from Agnosticism ? He 
falls back upon faith in the conception that the 
world is so framed as to give man in the long run 
rational and emotional satisfaction. The question at 
once arises — In matters of fundamental importance, 
are the dictates of the heart more authoritative than 
the conclusions of the head ? Are man's aspirations 
the measure of Nature's possibilities? Or is it the 
duty of man to make his aspirations conform to 
Nature's actualities ? To these questions all mytholo- 
gies and theologies give one answer; science and 
critical philosophy gi-ve another. 

Professor Eraser declares for Theism as the only 
breakwater to pessimism. If there is not a Deity for 
man to trust, and a future existence for man to ex- 
pect, life must be declared a despairful tangle. Now, 
before Theism gives an optimist flavor to human 
thought, something would need to be known of the 
nature of the future existence postulated by Pro- 
fessor Eraser. There is nothing captivating in the 
thought of a prolongation of life, apart from its value 
and conditions. The Greeks believed in life after 
death, but they got little satisfaction out of their 
creed, because of the dreariness of their conceptions. 
Who, again, can rest satisfied with the conception of 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT ' 231 

immortality embodied in Calvinism ? Who would 
not prefer the annihilation of the entire human race 
to a future in which a few revelled in heavenly bliss, 
while the vast majority endured forever the pangs 
of Tophet ? To assume, therefore, as Theists do, that 
the bare expectation of life after death is a consol- 
ing thought, is to go in the teeth of history and 
human nature. In order to find a resting-point for 
his optimism, the Theist must declare for the neces- 
sity of a revelation. The supernaturalist can score 
against the Theist by simply asking whether it is 
reasonable to suppose that the great question of 
man's destiny would be left to vague surmisings 
and melancholy musings. Professor Eraser feels the 
force of this consideration. No doubt he realizes 
the fact that when once the miraculous element is 
introduced, the question enters the historical sphere, 
where again Hume meets us with his formidable 
essay on miracles. Speculative philosophy will help 
us little in dealing with Hume. Light, if it comes, 
will come from a deeper study of history, keener 
scientific penetration into the nature and purpose 
of life, and a more exhaustive psychological study 
of man. Already science, when reduced to its last 
analysis, supplies a rational basis for the belief in a 
mysterious awe-inspiring Power, and fosters a sense 
of dependence on that Power. It remains to be 
seen whether science, as interpreted by philosophy, 



232 HERBERT SPENCER 

can throw some light upon the great and funda- 
mental question of purpose. Already science, in 
the form of the Evolution theory, has lightened 
the burden of this question, so far as this earthly 
scene is concerned. The problem of evil and pain 
is not so formidable to us as it was to Hume. We 
are discovering significance in the earthly drama. 
A reverential Agnosticism does not preclude the 
hope that in the future man may secure for himself 
a harmonious conception of the world and human 
destiny, by means of which he will no longer find 
himself an orphan wandering in a dreary wilderness, 
but the heir of all the ages, the interpreter of Nature 
and co-worker with the Eternal. 

Whatever the future has in store for philosophy, 
one prediction may confidently be made, that humanity 
will owe to Herbert Spencer an everlasting debt of 
gratitude. Forty years ago he set himself a colossal 
task. He resolved to give to the world a new system 
of philosophy. Ill-health dogged the footsteps of the 
philosopher all through the long spell of years, and 
at times it seemed as if the Synthetic Philosophy 
would be left an unfinished monument of splendid 
audacity. Handicapped by ill-health, uncheered by 
popular sympathy, unrewarded by the reading public, 
Herbert Spencer went his lonely way with a courage 
akin to heroism. Now he sees his task completed. 
Only those who have been privileged with Mr. 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT 233 

Spencer's friendship fully know the difficulties with 
which he had to battle, and can estimate the victory 
he has won. Many thinkers in the flush of opening 
manhood have conceived great systems of thought, 
and entered upon far-reaching projects. But too 
often the glow of intellectual enthusiasm has died 
away in presence of the daily drudgery of lonely 
toil. Even those who get beyond the Coleridgean 
stage of weaving philosophic dreams, find their ideal 
receding as they get entangled in the pleasures, 
anxieties, and ambitions of Vanity Fair. Herbert 
Spencer has refused to soil his robes in Vanity 
Fair. He has treated the baubles of the passing 
hour with philosophic indifference. Into old age 
he has carried the intellectual vigor of youth, 
and the mellow wisdom of ripe manhood. He has 
never wavered in his devotion to the great interpre- 
tative and constructive ideas with which his name is 
associated ; and thus the reader has the rare pleasure 
of studying a system of thought which, from start 
to finish, breathes the spirit of continuity. There 
are no gaps to fill in ; the various volumes hang on 
" First Principles " like golden beads upon a golden 
string. Herbert Spencer may rest from his labors 
with the proud consciousness that with his own right 
hand he has carved his path from obscurity to a 
philosophic throne. He now stands among the 
sceptred immortals. 



INDEX 



^schylus, 130. 

Age of Reason, foreseen, 2; and 

Materialism, 30; end of, 31; 

hopes entertained from, 97. 
Alcibiades, as soldier, 130. 
America, Spencer's admirers in, 

62,64. 
Ancestor-worship, 194 ff. 
Antisthenes, 129. 
Appleton's Popular Science 

Monthly, article on Spencer in, 

45. 
Archytas, 129. 
Aristotle, on slavery, 130. 
Augustine, influence of, on world, 2. 
Australia, New Liberalism in, 166. 

Bacon, Francis, 20. 

Bentham, Jeremy, aids revival of 
Empiricism, 35 ; and Utilitarian- 
ism, 40, 41, 147; and Social Con- 
tract theory, 161 ff . ; and Con- 
science, 171. 

Berkeley, 114-115. 

British Association, the, 19. 

Brotherhood of man, the, 180-181, 
186-188. 

Buckle, Henry Thomas, 4, 5 ; 
quoted, 129. 

Burghers, rise of, 133 ; and Magna 
Charta, 155 ; first represented in 
Parliament, 156 ; in Spain, Italy, 
and France, 156-158. 



Caird, Principal, 226. 

Calvin, influence of, on world, 2 ; 
conception of immortality, 231. 

Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 1, 5 ; and 
Materialism, 33. 

Catholic Church, in Middle Ages, 
136. 

Chamberlain, Joseph, 165. 

Chateaubriand, 33. 

Chemical affinity not a cause, 
85. 

Christ, ethical theory of, 181. 

Civil Engineer Journal, the, Spen- 
cer's papers in, 16. 

Civilization, modern, and social 
problem, 134 ff. 

Clan, the, 179. 

Cobden, Richard, 141, 185-186. 

Coleridge, 33, 233; Mill's essay on, 
quoted, 34. 

Collectivism, 159. 

Commerce, true theory of, first 
formulated, 139 ff. ; and rights 
of man, 153. 

Communism, domestic, 126. 

Comte, Auguste, 4, 5, 73 ; merits of 
his work, 21-24 ; defects, 24-26 ; 
Spencer not a follower of, 43; 
on attempts to reduce phenom- 
ena to a single law, 50; on cell 
doctrine, 50 ; his philosophy and 
Spencer's, 52 ; on the cause of 
progress, 127, 161 ; mistakes cause 



235 



236 



INDEX 



of civilization, 136 ; his fine pic- 
ture of the Middle Ages, 138. 
Concepts of Modern Physics, 

Stallo's, 74. 
Concepts of Modern Science, 

Stallo's, 207. 
Condorcet, 97. 
Conscience, Kant's views on, 169 

ff. ; the Utilitarians' idea of, 171. 
Consciousness, and Psychology, 

109 fe. 
Conservation of Forces, 70, 71, 85, 

207. 
Constitution of Man, Comhe's, 20. 
Continent, Spencer's disciples on 

the, 64. 
Co-operation, indispensable to 

man, 126 ; origin of, 183. 
Copyright Commission, Spencer's 

evidence before, 60. 
Corn Laws, the, 156, 185. 
Cortes, Spanish towns and the, 

156-157. 
Cousin, Victor, 33. 
Cuvier, 56. 

Darwin, Charles, 67, 95, 117, 134, 

182. 
Delage, Professor Yves, quoted, 

102. 
Demosthenes, a soldier, 130. 
Descartes, 114. 
Deuteronomy, quoted, 197. 
Diderot, aims of writings of, 3; 

creed of, summed up by Hol- 

bach, 30-31; quoted, 199. 
Dissolution, definition of, 79. 
" Dynamic Element in Life, The," 

87. 

Ecclesiastical Institutions, Spen- 
cer's, 214. 



Eclecticism, 33. 

Economist, the, Spencer sub-editor 
of, 17. 

Ego, German philosophers' self- 
acting, 115. 

Emerson, Ralph "Waldo, quoted, 59. 

Encyclopsedia of Sciences, the, 3, 
32. 

Encyclopaedists, the, 3, 97. 

Epaminondas, 129. 

European Thought, Merz's, 21. 

Evans, Mary Ann. See George 
Eliot. 

Experiential philosophy, the, 27- 
28; revival of, 34; Spencer's in- 
fluence on, 38. 

Family, in social organization, 
126 ff . ; the ethical unit, 178-179. 

Fetichism man's early religion, 
192. 

Feudalism, 132; despotism su- 
preme under, 150. 

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 33. 

Fire Principle, Stahl's, 85. 

First Principles, Spencer's, 10, 68, 
76, 83, 94, 213. 

Fiske, John, quoted, 117-119,203; 
on prolongation of infancy, 177 ; 
The Idea of God, 194. 

Foster, Sir Michael, 92-93. 

Eraser, Professor, criticised, 227 ff. 

Free Cities, in England, 137 ; rise 
of, 153; in Spain, Italy, and 
France, 156 ff. 

Free Trade, 139, 141, 156, 158 ; re- 
lation to ethics, 181 ff. ; Cobden's 
clear view of, 185-186. 

French Revolution, the, 29-30, 157. 

Gauss's laws, 74. 

Genesis, Individuation and, 98. 



INDEX 



23T 



George Eliot, 9, 54-56. 

Godwin, William, 97. 

Goethe, 31, 123. 

Gravitation, law of, 71; a name 

and not a cause, 85. 
Great man theory, 1. 
Greece, cause of fall of, 130. 
Green, Professor, 219 ff. 
Grove, Sir "William R., 75. 
Guilds, 151. 
Guizot, on Industrialism, 132-133; 

his book cited, 184. 
Gunton, 135. 

Hamilton, Sir William, 34, 68, 204- 

205, 208, 209. 
Happiness man's chief goal, 41. 
Hegel, 33, 115, 123; favorite in 

University circles, 13, 64 ; his 

Absolute, 208 ff. ; represented 

Deity as product of Evolution, 

220. 
Helmholtz, quoted, 75, 207. 
Helvetius, philosophic system of, 

3. 
Hennell, Miss Sara, 55. 
Herbert, Lord, 191. 
Heredity, 100. 
Hero-worship, result of ignorance 

of law of evolution, 5, 6. 
Higher Criticism, the, 190. 
Hinton, James, quoted, 86, 210- 

212, 214. 
History of Modem Philosophy, 

Hoffding's, 220-222. 
Hobbes, Thomas, 147 ; and Social 

Contract theory, 161 ff. 
Hoffding, Dr., 220-222. 
Holbach, philosophic system of, 3; 

his System of Nature, 31, 32. 
Hooker, Dr., 57. 
Hooker, Sir Joseph, 102-103. 



House of Commons, origin of, 156 ; 
conspicuous in modern civiliza- 
tion, 158. 

Hudson, Professor, quoted, 11-12, 
45^6. 

Humanity, in Comte's philosophy, 
52. 

Hume, David, 73, 204; his Agnos- 
ticism, 29; continues Locke and 
Berkeley's reasonings, 114-115; 
in sphere of religion, 192 ff. ; 
dialogues on religion, 229 ; essay 
on miracles, 231. 

Huxley, T. H., criticises Comte, 4; 
and the Theologians, 28-29. 

Idea of God, The, Fiske's, 194. 

Idealist, Spencer termed an, 89. 

Idealists, the, 216 ff. 

Ideas, part i^layed by, in civiliza- 
tion, 127. 

India, Spencer's followers in, 64. 

Individual, subordinated to State 
in Greece and Rome, 131. 

Individuation and Genesis, 98. 

Industrialism, origin of, 132; 
growth of, 133; and Roman 
Catholicism, 136-137 ; and Mili- 
tarism, 148; and religion, 197 ff. 

Infancy, comparative length of 
period of, 126 ; Fiske's theory of 
prolongation of, 177. 

In Memoriam, 182. 

Instinct, Reason and, 112 ff. 

Intelligence, law of. 111. 

Intuitionalists, the, 189 ff. 

Italy, Free Cities in, 157. 

Iverach, Professor, quoted, 226- 
227. 

I Jackson, Dr. Hughlings, on Prin- 
\ cijiles of Psychology, 12,0-121, 



238 



INDEX 



Japan, Spencer's works welcomed 

in, 64. 
Job, 123, 203; quoted, 215. 
Joule, J. P., 75. 
Jurists, the Roman, 180. 

Kant, Immanuel, 33; explains 
stellar and planetary systems by 
law of gravitation, 71; roused 
to philosophic activity by Hume, 
115, 204; on Conscience, 169 ff. 

Knowable, philosophy of the, 68. 

Labor, held in contempt by Greeks, 
130; effect of substitution of 
machine for hand, 139, 142 ff . ; 
division of, 183. 

Lankester, Professor Ray, 102. 

Laplace, 71. 

Law of gravitation, 71, 85. 

Law of the three stages, Comte's, 
22,84. 

Lecky , W. E. H. , on Roman Catholi- 
cism and Industrialism, 136-137. 

Legislation, influence of, on eco- 
nomic progress, 158. 

Leibnitz, school of, criticised by 
John Fiske, 118. 

Lewes, George Henry, 31-32, 54, 
55, 56. 

Liberalism, Old and New, 165 ff. 

Locke, John, 37, 147; metaphysi- 
cal system of, 113 ff . ; on co-oper- 
ation, 127 ; and the Social Con- 
tract, 171 ; The Reasonableness 
of Christianity, 191. 

Logic, J. S. Mill's, 27. 

Lotze, 220 ff. 

Lyell, Sir Charles, his Principles 
of Geology, 18. 

Machinery, effect of use of, 139, 
142 ff. 



Magna Charta, 136, 154, 155, 158. 

Maistre, J. M. de, 33. 

Malthusianism, 97 ff. 

Manners and Fashion, Spencer's, 
44. 

Martineau, Dr. James, 191. 

Masson, David, on J. S. Mill's 
philosophy, 36-37. 

Materialism and apostles of Age of 
Reason, 30-31 ; regarded as sys- 
tem of philosophy, 32; fall of, 
33 ; Hegel's Absolute system and, 
209. 

Materialist, Spencer not a, 66 ff., 
122-123, 177. 

Matter, and Motion, 79 ff. ; Mind 
and, symbolic terms only, 122. 

Melissus, as military commander, 
129. 

Mercier, Dr., on value of Spencer's 
work, 121. 

Merz, his European TJiought, 
quoted, 21. 

Metaphysicians, the, and Cousin, 33. 

Middle Ages, narrow view of 
brotherhood of man in, 181. 

Middle class in England, 137, 142. 

Militarism, 128 ff., 148; formation 
of nations under, 152; Spencerian 
view of, 159-160; ethical code 
under, 179-180 ; human sacrifice 
under, 196. 
Mill, James, 7, 35. 
Mill, John Stuart, 4, 5, 73 ; admires 
Spencer, 15 ; his Logic, 27 ; and 
Sir William Hamilton, 34; and 
Empiricism, 35; Masson on, .36- 
37; his Representative Govern- 
ment, 42 ; offers Spencer finan- 
cial assistance, 62 ; limit of his 
philosophy, 69 ; on formation of 
a law from inductions, 79 ; on the 



INDEX 



239 



mind, 116; makes intellect chief 
cause of progress, 127 ; on evil 
effect of machinery, 139; on 
Conscience, 171. 

Mind and Matter, symbolic terms 
only, 122. 

Monotheism, Hume on, 192; growth 
from ancestor-worship, 195-196. 

Morality, impossible without so- 
ciality, 175; product of social 
evolution, 187. 

Morgan, Professor Lloyd, quoted, 
101. 

Morley, John, 2. 

Motherhood, civilization rooted in, 
126. 

Motion, direction and rhythm of, 
76 ff,; Matter and, 79 ff. 

Natural History of Religion, The, 
Hume's, 192. 

Natural Religion, 191. 

Natural Selection, law of, 95. 

Nature, aim of, in social evolution, 
175 ff. 

Nebular Theory, 70, 71, 80. 

Neo-Kantianism, 116, 217, 219. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 66-67, 71, 74; 
Spencer's work as compared to 
that of, 121. 

Nonconformist, The, Spencer's pa- 
pers in, 16, 39-40. 

Old Testament, slaughter of hu- 
man beings authorized in the, 
196-197. 

Orderliness of nature, due to what ? 
81. 

Organism, society compared to an, 
147-148. 

Origin and Growth of the Moral 
Instinct, Sutherland's, 173. 



Other self, hypothesis of the, 194r- 
195. 

Paine, Thomas, 164. 

Parliament, burghers first repre- 
sented in, 155-156. 

Paul, influence of, on world, 2. 

Pericles, as soldier, 130. 

Persistence of Force, Spencer's 
starting-point, 72 ff. 

Personality, Professor Fraser on, 
228-229. 

Philosophy of Style, Spencer's, 44. 

Philosophy, definition of, 30 ; duty 
of, according to Spencer, 51. 

Phlogiston, Stahl's doctrine of, 85. 

Plato, as soldier, 129. 

Political Economy, Mill's, 139. 

Polybius, as soldier, 130. 

Polytheism, 195. 

Positivism and Spencerism,49, 53; 
Comte claimed to be author of, 
51. 

Pri7iciples of Biology, Spencer's, 
6, 83, 91 ff., 94; creates new era 
in study of Nature, 99 ff . ; Lloyd 
Morgan on, 101; Professor Ar- 
thur Thomson on, 103-104. 

Principles of Geology, Lyell's, 18. 

Principles of Psychology, 44, 125; 
Dr. Hughlings Jackson's com- 
ments on, 120-121. 

Pringle-Pattison, Professor Seth, 
116; quoted, 218. 

Progress : Its Law and Cause, 
Spencer's, 44, 47. 

Progress, cause of social, 127 ; 
Spencerian definition of social, 
144. 

Proper Sphere of Government, 
The, Spencer's, .39. 

Protection, influence of, on trade 



240 



INDEX 



and commerce, 140; a survival 
of military regime, 181. 

Protestant movement, the, 136. 

Psychology, revolutionized by 
Spencer, 107; science of , begins 
with dawning of consciousness, 
109; philosophy rooted in, 203. 

"Radical programme," Chamber- 
lain's, 165. 

Rational school, the, 27-28. 

Reason and Instinct, 112 ff. 

Reasonableness of Christianity, 
The, Locke's, 191. 

Reasons for Dissenting from M. 
Comte, Spencer's, 43. 

Redistribution of Matter and Mo- 
tion, 72. 

Reflex action. 111. 

Reform Bill, the, 156, 158. 

Regimentation, method of, 149. 

Relativity of Elnowledge, doctrine 
of, 34. 

Relativity, doctrine of, 204; at- 
tacked by Hegelian school, 205. 

Religion, influence of, on Mill and 
Spencer, 9. 

Representative Government, Mill's, 
42. 

Rights of Man, Paine's, 164. 

Rome, cause of fall of, 131 ; ethical 
effect of world-wide conquest of, 
180. 

Rousseau, a Deist, 30; his theory 
of state of nature, 42; on co- 
operation, 127; and Social Con- 
tract theory, 147, 161. 

Royalists, the, and Chateaubriand, 
33. 

Schelling, 33. 

Science, definition of, 30. 



Sermon on the Mount, the, 181; 
to-day declared impracticable by 
clergy, 198. 

Slavery, among Greeks, 130; in 
Middle Ages, 133. 

Smith, Adam, 139 &., 176, 181 ff.; 
his doctrine treated as an ex- 
ploded superstition, 185. 

Social Contract, the, 127, 147, 
161 ff. ; Locke's, 171. 

Socialism, a retrograde movement, 
159. 

Sociality, co-operation the germ of, 
126 ; may exist without morality, 
175. 

Social Statics, Spencer's, 40, 46, 
54, 60. 

Socrates, a soldier, 129; a citizen 
of the world, 180. 

Solon, 129. 

Sophocles, as soldier, 130. 

Spain, militarism dominant in, 156- 
157. 

Spencer, the elder, 7, 8. 

Spencer, Herbert, birth of, 6 ; un- 
affected by religious influences, 
9, 10; education, 11-14; a civil 
engineer, 15; sub-editor of the 
Economist, 17 ; earliest products 
of his thinking, 39-40 ; personal 
characteristics, 54-65; relations 
with George Eliot, 56 ; and Amer- 
icans, 62, 64; his influence in 
Europe and the East, 64, 102; 
disregards worldly honors, 65, 
233. 

Spencer, Rev. Thomas, 11 ff. 

Spinoza, 190. 

Stallo, 74 ; his Concepts of Modern 
Science, 207-208. 

State, the, in Greece and Rome, 
130-131; in Middle Ages, 136; in 



INDEX 



241 



time of war, 150; modern view 

of duty of, 154-155; Spencerian 

view of, 159 ff. 
State of nature, theory of, 42. 
Structure of the Protoplasma, 

Delage's, quoted, 102-103. 
Stuart dynasty, 154, 15G. 
Sutherland, Alexander, 173. 
Sydney, meeting of unemployed 

in, 106. 
Sympathy, basis of morals, 176; 

purifies human nature, 188. 
Synthetic Philosophy, Spencer's, 

prospectus issued, 54. 
System of Nature, Holbach's, 31, 

32. 
System of Philosophy, Spencer's, 

61. 

Taine, quoted, 28. 

Tennyson, Alfred, 182. 

Theists, the, 191. 

Themistocles, 129. 

Theology, Mill's philosophic con- 
ception that of, 28; Hume 
knocked props from, 115; sup- 
planted by science, 199-200. 

Theory of Population, Spencer's, 
44. 

Thomson, Professor Arthur, 
quoted, 103-104. 

Three stages, Comte's law of the, 
22, 84. 

Thucydides, as soldier, 130. 

Tocqueville, Alexis de, 135. 

Trade, true theory of, 139 £f. 

Trade Unionism, Spencerian view 
of, 159. 



Tribe, formation of the, 127 ff.; 

effect of expansion of, on the 

religious idea, 195-196. 
Turgot, quoted, 167. 

University cliques, opposition of, 
to Spencer, 13, 64. 

Utilitarianism, Spencer's feeling 
toward, 40 ff. 

Utilitarians, the, 40 ff. ; and Con- 
science, 171 &. 

Vestiges of Creation, The, Spen- 
cer's, 20. 

Vital Force, 86; inadequate as 
explanation of biological phe- 
nomena, 87. 

Vital Principle, postulated, 86, &4; 
many scientists still cling to the, 
105-106. 

Voltaire, aims of writings of, 3; 
a Deist, 30. 

Von Baer, 44, 45. 

Wages, effect of machinery on, 

143-144. 
War, see Militarism. 
Ward, Professor, 24-25, 219 ff. 
Wealth, distribution of, in Greece 

and Rome, 130-131. 
Weismann, Professor, 100. 
Whewell, William, 20-21. 
Wordsworth, William, 200. 

Xenophon, as military commander, 
130. 

Zophar, 215. 



JUN 301900 



